Visa shy of taxi cabs (was: Re: [LINK] AMEX shy of XXX sites, and .coms die @ 1/day)

[Scott Howard]

On Sat, Nov 18, 2000 at 05:21:49PM +1100, Eric Scheid wrote:
> From: Karl Schaffarczyk <karl@schaffarczyk.emu.id.au> (18/11/00 2:12 PM)
> 
> >I got into a taxi cab the other year, and attempted to pay with my visa 
> >card. It was not accepted and i was advised by the cabbie that visacards 
> >are not accepted as payment in taxis nationwide.
> 
> IIRC, this is the reverse situation from AMEX, where the cabbie industry 
> won't accept VISA, and not VISA won't accept cabbies. Something to do 
> with how long VISA takes to pay (etc). The cabbie industry got ticked off 
> and dumped VISA.

Not quite.  When you pay a cab fare with a card they charge you a 10%
premium.  Visa do not allow merchants to charge extra for the privledge
of paying by card, thus no Visa in cabs.
The whole issue of different discounts for cash v's card doesn't seem
to have occured to them - perhaps they should just put all cab fares up
to 10%, then give an 11% discount for paying cash? :)

  Scott.