Payment processing for taxi & private hire
A taxi takes payment in the back seat, over cellular, with the meter stopped and the next fare waiting. The terminal has to be charged, connected and fast, and the pricing has to respect thousands of small card present taps.
Fare volume is a stream of low value contactless payments, card present in the vehicle, every day of the week.
Agreements built for shops treat mobile fare volume as an afterthought, and a fixed per transaction fee weighs heaviest on the shortest fares.
Battery powered terminals on cellular in every vehicle, with pricing negotiated against your actual fare distribution.
Photo: Quintin Soloviev / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 4.0
The back seat is the point of sale
In vehicle acceptance runs on battery powered mobile terminals, the Clover Flex being a common fit: tap, insert and swipe in the passenger's hand, receipts printed or sent from the unit, a battery that lasts a full shift, and a cellular connection that does not depend on borrowed WiFi. The terminal is the storefront, so it gets specified like one.
Seconds at the curb
A fare ends at a curb, often in traffic. The contactless flow closes in seconds: amount from the meter, tap, done. Tip prompts are configured to your operation or turned off entirely, and the drop off never waits on a slow terminal handshake while the next fare stands outside the window.
Connectivity is the uptime story
A terminal that cannot reach the network is a cash only cab. Deployment here is a connectivity exercise: cellular service matched to where the fleet actually drives, and offline behaviour configured deliberately rather than discovered at the bottom of a parkade. When the payment fails, the fare walks, so reliability is the first specification, not a footnote.
Per vehicle deployment, swap out support
A fleet is not one merchant with one terminal. It is a terminal per vehicle plus spares, and the paperwork has to stay straight across all of them. We deploy per vehicle, keep the fleet inventory clean, and support swap outs so a failed unit means a stop at the depot, not a day of lost card fares.
Dispatch stays yours
Acceptance works alongside the booking and dispatch tools you already run, so nothing about how trips are assigned or logged changes. What changes is visibility: the statement shows fare count, average ticket and card mix per fleet, which is the basis the agreement should be negotiated on, not a rate quoted before anyone has seen how you actually transact.
Hardware we deploy
Semi integrated with your POS, ethernet with wireless fallback, tap, insert and swipe, built in receipt printer.
WiFi plus LTE fallback, full service battery life, configured to your workflow, splits handled at the table.
Contactless acceptance on a supported Android device. No hardware to buy for mobile and field use cases.
Example hardware lineup and pricing for illustration. The fitted deployment and real pricing follow the statement review.
One independent team, six partner platforms
Kubera Payments Corporation is a registered agent of the partners listed. Clover is a registered trademark of Fiserv, Inc.
Common questions
Which terminals work in a vehicle?
Battery powered mobile terminals with cellular built in, the Clover Flex being a common deployment. They run a full shift on battery and accept tap, chip and swipe in the vehicle.
What happens in a cellular dead zone?
That is a deployment design question. Coverage is matched to where the fleet drives, and offline authorization behaviour is configured deliberately, matched to your risk tolerance.
How should taxi fare volume be priced?
As what it is: high count, low value, card present taps. The fixed per transaction component matters as much as the percentage at fare sized tickets, and the agreement should be negotiated on your actual fare distribution.
How does deployment work across a whole fleet?
Per vehicle, with spares and swap out support so a failed terminal never takes a car off card acceptance. The review scopes the fleet count and the rollout schedule before anything is recommended.
A recommended payments partner of the BC Chamber of Commerce
Price your taxi & private hire volume properly
Send us a recent statement. We read it line by line and come back within 1 to 2 business days with exactly what you are paying and whether the structure fits how you run. No obligation, just numbers.
Built for businesses that expect more from their payment systems.