Crypto for cabs

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Last night, I had an in-depth conversation with a black cab driver here in London. Black cabs here (similar to Yellow Cabs in New York and many others around the world I guess) are in institution - part of make up of the city. But they’ve struggled to modernise over the past decade, and have been losing market share to Uber.

As any Londoner knows, the 21,000 black cabs in London hate (but are forced by regulation) to accept credit/debit cards. They are charged ~3% in fees by the banks. The ratio of cash:card payment has shifted dramatically in the past few years, so cab drivers are losing more of their earnings than ever to debit/credit card fees.

Anyway, this particular cab driver was desperate for a way to reduce his transaction costs as card payments became more prevalent. He knew a bit about crypto, but had no idea how to implement, or where to go to learn more. But he realised that crypto could cut out the banks, and put more of his money directly into his pocket.

Which got me thinking about the potential opportunities for partnerships/tie-ups with similar groups, and ways to educate/help non-crypto people.

What are the best resources that you share with non-crypto people to explain the concept, and what are the best resources you share to help those people actually begin to implement something?

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I actually met an uber driver in prague who runs stuff like this! If we wanted to get in touch he runs this site IIRC: Redirecting...

Hope this helps!

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Great catch @j12b

We’ve recently discussed some possible ways to increase adoption of crypto by merchants and one of the ideas was to try and identify which groups are getting the short stick with the existing infrastructure. Apparently taxi drivers are in that category as well and we should investigate any opportunities around that.

I think you found a rather interesting example, since Uber and its clones are widely hailed as “disruptive unique innovations” and all the other buzzwords, and indeed when you actually use it you can’t deny that it’s cheaper, more comfy and generally a good user experience.

But when you look at it from a different angle, it’s really a huge centralization process where whichever actual driver takes your order you go through the same bottleneck intermediary. Which is kind of something we don’t want.