Cabcharge to give third parties access to its cards

In a first for the Australian taxi industry, Cabcharge Australia has agreed to allow rival payment processors to process Cabcharge cards on their in-taxi payment terminals.

The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission announced yesterday that Cabcharge had given an enforceable undertaking to facilitate third party processing of Cabcharge cards.

Third parties had been unable to reach agreement with Cabcharge on the matter. In the ACCC's view this limited their ability to compete with Cabcharge for the acceptance and processing of non-cash payments in taxis.

ACCC chairman Rod Sims said in a statement: "The undertaking opens up this market to further competition. Cabcharge will no longer be the only terminal in a taxi that can process all forms of commonly used non-cash payment."

Cabcharge has undertaken that over a five-year period it will negotiate with third parties to provide access and provide any technology support required to enable Cabcharge card processing.

In 2010 the Federal Court fined Cabcharge A$15 million for refusing to deal with third parties and for predatory pricing - both breaches of the then Trade Practices Act.

The court ordered Cabcharge to establish criteria for third party access.

The ACCC got involved when it received a complaint that Cabcharge had refused to deal with a third party processor requesting access.