Estonian Taxify first in the world to launch mobile billing for cabs

Estonian Taxify offering taxis at the push of a button in 7 countries is now making sure payments are just as easy. After launching in-app payments with debit and credit cards in Baltic countries in April (with Finland and The Netherlands launching in May), Taxify has now rolled out mobile carrier billing in Estonia.

Taxify is the first taxi app in  the world to launch mobile carrier billing. The main reason for it are favorable conditions achieved with EMT (TeliaSonera group):

“Telecom operators have globally taken margins between 10-50% from each transaction,” explains Taxify co-founder Martin Villig. “Those margins have been suitable for virtual goods, but not sustainable for majority of offline services. TeliaSonera has now been the most innovative operator to provide competitive payout terms that can be accepted by Taxify taxi drivers.”

Estonia has good history with mobile carrier billing. Local success story m-Parking was introduced back in year 2000. Today more than 95% of daily parking happens via mobile phones and carrier billing in Tallinn and throughout Estonia.

Taxify customers can still pay cash, use bank cards in taxis that have terminals or select the option to pay from card or mobile carrier billing in the app. The new payment option is already available to iOS and Android users in Estonia, with Windows Phone app soon catching up.

Over the weekend several hundreds of  people have used the new EMT m-payment solution. Taxify team has also revealed their plans to expandit to Latvia and Lithuania in the near future.