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| Transforming the Australian taxi payments market and taking on a monopoly rival
Live Payments, a member of the Live Group of companies, today announced the launch of a Motorpass co-branded taxi only charge card for the Australian taxi market. For the first time a true competitor to the Australian dominant taxi payments provider Cabcharge has emerged. Cabcharge, already under investigation from the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, now faces real competitive pressure for the first time in 33 years. More importantly, taxi travellers from corporates of all sizes and governments at all levels have a viable alternative.
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Live Payments, a member of the Live Group of companies, today announced the launch of a Motorpass co-branded taxi only charge card for the Australian taxi market. For the first time a true competitor to the Australian dominant taxi payments provider Cabcharge has emerged. Cabcharge, already under investigation from the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, now faces real competitive pressure for the first time in 33 years. More importantly, taxi travellers from corporates of all sizes and governments at all levels have a viable alternative.
With a total market of approximately $450 million turnover per year all to itself, Cabcharge has operated with no real competition in taxi only travel transaction processing.
Live Payments has partnered with Motorpass, owned by Retail Decisions, to deliver a co-branded card solution that brings real change in the industry. Live Payments has been searching for a solution partner for over 2 years both internationally and locally and found Motorpass to be the right fit. With the existing infrastructure to run a co-branded card, a willingness to work in an agile and solution focused manner, Live Payments has been able to deliver the taxi payments solution to the market in a very timely manner.
Existing partner SmartPay Cadmus also leveraged its extensive software and hosting experience to contribute significantly to the project. “Working on a project of this size and with the number of terminals that Live TaxiEpay has in the marketplace is always complex” said Pat O’Brien General Manager of SmartPay Cadmus Australia. “The important thing is all partners worked well together to deliver this solution that will radically change the taxi industry forever”.
“The new solution means that we can leverage the Motorpass brand and usability with the experience and systems that Live Payments has developed and the extensive and significant relationship of Live TaxiEpay with SmartPay Cadmus. The ultimate winner here will be the corporate and government organisations travelling in the taxi” said Tom Varga, CEO of Live Group.
Capitalising on the experience of Motorpass in processing secure transactions for fuel cards predominantly, the Live Payments offer delivers a very creative solution. Tom Varga said “We see a state of the art back office management system delivered to the market that makes reconciliation easy and fast. In fact existing customers talk about 80% time savings. Add to this the ability to manage each trip, add trip details after the fact and have each user responsible for their own travel, the new system delivers accountability and transparency that corporates and governments have been craving. This will deliver better cost management, less administration time and improved control”.
Live Group has already been winning market share in the taxi EFTPOS terminal market with its Live TaxiEpay business. Recent analyst reports published by both Macquarie Bank and Goldman Sachs JBWere estimate a market share of between 16-18% as of June, with July expected to show further growth.
The addition of a taxi only charge card to the EFTPOS terminals brings a holistic alternative to Cabcharge. Tom Varga said “If early indications are anything to go by it looks like the taxi landscape has changed forever”.
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Live Group
The Live Group is a transaction processing business currently specifically servicing Australian taxi drivers / operators and corporate customers. The Live Group of companies currently includes the Live Payments and Live TaxiEpay brands.
Live Payments
Live Payments, provides a unique corporate taxi payments solution and online reconciliation portal that assists corporate users in tracking their taxi expenditure. With two distinct payments products in the charge card and voucher, Live Payments delivers a complete taxi payments solution to meet the needs of every corporate user and more rewards for drivers and operators.
Live TaxiEpay
Live Group’s other subsidiary, Live TaxiEpay, is a wholly owned subsidiary of the Live Group specifically involved in supplying EFTPOS terminals and additional value-added services to the Australian taxi industry. Live TaxiEpay was created through the merger of TaxiEpay and Live Payments in November 2008. Since then, sites have been opened in Sydney, Brisbane and now Perth, with dealers and distributors located around the country. Live TaxiEpay delivers 2 types of terminal to the market in the handheld (mobile) terminal and in-car (fixed) terminal.
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