I received a press release earlier this morning that Easy Taxi Kenya today (finally?) launched cashless payments for its taxi hailing services. Easy Taxi is probably Kenya’s largest taxi hailing service with close to 5,000 taxis or thereabouts at this juncture in Nairobi and its environs.

Since launching over a year ago, Easy Taxi in Kenya has been accepting payments by cash and mobile money à la Safaricom’s M-Pesa. This in itself is makes a lot of sense since credit and debit card penetration seriously lags behind mobile money and cash in Kenya, even as it grows massively every year. However, a caveat behind this approach in my opinion is that Easy Taxi drivers in Kenya seem to arbitrarily set pricing for rides on this basis to the detriment of customers like myself even when their price guide/estimator says otherwise.

Its great news that Easy Taxi now offers cashless payments in more or less the same manner Uber has done since they launched in Kenya a couple of months back. There is something really cool about knowing your taxi ride is paid up without having to reach into your wallet or starting a mobile money transfer directly to the taxi driver as I have experienced on Uber Kenya to-date who do not yet have a cash or mobile money payment option. Cashless payments also offer in my opinion a more transparent payment method even though the bulk of Easy Taxi customers will probably continue using mobile money and cash.

Easy Taxi Pay (or ET Pay for short) is the name of the cashless payment service that is being powered through Amsterdam based payment services company Adyen – which processes all credit and debit card payments via the Easy Taxi mobile app globally. The way ET Pay works is that you add your credit or debit card details before hailing your taxi, click payment and select the ET Pay option.

The Easy Taxi mobile app can store multiple credit/debit card details at one time, giving customers the option to choose which card they would like to use to charge their ride with each request. However, one caveat to using ET Pay is that Easy Taxi customers in Kenya are encouraged to contact their banks directly to ensure they allow online transactions to card holders as some banks in Kenya have not enabled online payments for their card holders.

As part of launching ET Pay in Kenya, Easy Taxi is running a promotion for customers where they get a Kes. 500 discount off their first ET Pay ride. In order to do so, here are the steps to be followed to take advantage of this special offer:

1. Select the “Easy Taxi Pay” method prior to requesting your ride.
2. Once the ride is complete, a pop up asking you to verify mode of payment will appear on the screen.
3. Select the option for “Add promo code” and type ‘ETPLAUNCH’ into the field. Kes. 500 will automatically be deducted from the cost of the ride.

The ET Pay discount promotion is valid all through the month of March 2015 and will expire on 1st April 2015, at 12.00 am. Interested customers can reach Easy Taxi Kenya a customer service representative on +254 771 633210 or send an email to support@easytaxi.co.ke