Sincere good luck. I was involved in developing one of the first NY cab video + credit card hardware designs in the early 00s. We actually built it into an real yellow cab that, entertainingly, I got park in my driveway and drive around during the venture (on loan from one of the largest fleet owners).
We combined 16:9 screen, ATM keys, tap-and-go card reader, and traditional card stripe swipe, into a self contained unit mounted into the safety panel.
You could mute it (of course). It played a safety PSA, then let you figuratively "change the channel" to show you up-to-date video clips per your interest -- sports, news, weather, broadway promos, etc. -- or a GPS map of the cab's location in the city. A key innovation let us update the videos on the fly in all the cabs without requiring a SD card swap or a cellular data charge.
Great backers, but project got killed in a TLC political maneuver. It's a challenging industry to try to break into and try to change. The devices you see deployed in Vegas, Chicago, and NYC, are mostly hamstrung in various ways that often cost the cabbies or annoy riders. It's disappointing to see, but if someone can muster both the tech and the political clout, it's still ripe for disruption.
What's in cabs today is about 4x as expensive, bulkier, less durable, the user has less control, and the video content doesn't get refreshed on the fly. Our business plan offered a lower processing fee, paid into a health fund for cabbies, and had other financial bonuses to fleets, cabbies, and the city.
There were about a half dozen "competing" systems (hardware and business model) at the time. A couple of the others got adopted and their progeny are what you see in cabs in NYC now. We were backed by some of the best known finance, ad, and government money, but the decision was neither technical nor based on cost to cab owners or even cost to fleets.
As I said, I hope Square can disrupt that situation.
We combined 16:9 screen, ATM keys, tap-and-go card reader, and traditional card stripe swipe, into a self contained unit mounted into the safety panel.
You could mute it (of course). It played a safety PSA, then let you figuratively "change the channel" to show you up-to-date video clips per your interest -- sports, news, weather, broadway promos, etc. -- or a GPS map of the cab's location in the city. A key innovation let us update the videos on the fly in all the cabs without requiring a SD card swap or a cellular data charge.
Great backers, but project got killed in a TLC political maneuver. It's a challenging industry to try to break into and try to change. The devices you see deployed in Vegas, Chicago, and NYC, are mostly hamstrung in various ways that often cost the cabbies or annoy riders. It's disappointing to see, but if someone can muster both the tech and the political clout, it's still ripe for disruption.
Square might have that chance.