Ingogo taxi app launches new revenue stream via payment platform with financial heavyweights

Taxi booking and payment app ingogo has this week announced a partnership with ANZ Bank and payment platform provider Ingenico to launch a full service terminal for cash, eftpos and contactless payments.

Co-founder and chief executive Hamish Petrie told StartupSmart the terminal had been in the works for 12 months and had taken significant investment.

“It’s not something you can hack together on an oily rag that’s for sure,” Petrie says. “It’s really important to give taxi drivers a unified payment platform. This sets us up to provide the driver with a single solution and process everything from mobile wallets embedded in the phone, to contactless cards, to more traditional eftpos plastic.”

The launch comes after a 30 day trial of the terminal with 250 taxi drivers who processed over $1 million in payments.

The terminal gives ingogo access to small processing fees from every payment going through a taxi.

“The first 250 terminals we put out made over a million in payments in a month, and we make money from processing those as well. This is a significant addition to our business,” Petrie says.

Petrie adds the terminal puts ingogo in a different league to their competition.

“The other apps are just a booking app, and the other terminal providers are just terminals. We’re the first business to fully integrate the two solutions,” Petrie says.

“Only a fraction of bookings made with goCatch are paid for through their app. And only 30% of taxi users actually book a cab, so they’re missing out the vast majority of payment options. So we’re focused on fully servicing the same market.”

The ingogo terminal will be rolled out into thousands of taxis by the end of the year.

In a statement, ANZ general manager of cards and payments, Marj Demmer, said: “Contactless payments are driving change and innovation across all industries. More than ever, customers want fast and secure payment options and we’re pleased we were able to work with ingogo to develop this new payment app.”

This has been a good month for ingogo, with the team winning the CeBIT Future of Payments Start-up Pitching Contest last week.