Taxi network operator Cabcharge Australia has started testing a payment service for Secure Parking and, if all goes well, will soon take over processing payments for the car park operator throughout Australia. This first venture into non-taxi payments is a significant development for Cabcharge.Under chief executive Andrew Skelton, who has been in the job for 15 months, Cabcharge has developed a strategy of leveraging its skills in taxi payments by extending them into other areas."We have a world leading business, running 22,000 mobile payment terminals," Skelton said."The infrastructure and the team that support that business can also cover some different niches."Skelton described the Secure Parking deal as a "toehold" or first step into the world of unattended payments, which potentially includes vending machines, cinema ticket kiosks and parking meters.Skelton insisted that Cabcharge's change of strategy was driven by opportunity, adding that the company's high level of technical expertise was not widely understood.Cabcharge was one of the first payment processing companies to accept China Unionpay card payments and it is, to Skelton's knowledge, the only one to accept Apple Pay."If someone gets into a taxi with Apple Pay activated on their smartphone we can process the payment. Our people created that capability."But Skelton conceded that Cabcharge's new strategic direction was also motivated by necessity. Since early 2014 Victoria, New South Wales and Western Australia have introduced laws regulating service fees on taxi payments, cutting those fees from a surcharge of ten per cent plus GST to five per cent (including GST).Largely as a result of those changes the company's revenue fell 4.7 per cent during the year to June.The company is also facing greater competition. In June, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission announced that rival payment processors would be allowed to process Cabcharge cards on their in-taxi payment terminals. Cabcharge has given the ACCC an enforceable undertaking to facilitate third party processing of Cabcharge cards.The effect of this is that Cabcharge's terminals will no longer be the only terminals in taxis that can process all forms of commonly used non-cash payment.Since that announcement, payment companies goCatch (working with Mint Payments) and Smartpay have announced plans to expand into the taxi payment market.Skelton said the change would introduce more competition into the taxi payment market, but there was a silver lining for Cabcharge. At the moment the company only provides payment services to taxi networks but in future will be able to deal directly with drivers as well."At the moment we get less than half the Visa, MasterCard and American Express payments in taxis in Sydney. Under our old arrangements it would have been unpalatable for us to move into the driver terminal market."The pathway we are opening up to onboard other terminal providers to process payments made with our payment instruments works both ways - it opens up the driver market for us."Cabcharge has also made a significant upgrade to the technology it uses in taxis. Its payment terminals have been running off a 2G modem but now it is