question

taxiguy avatar image
taxiguy asked taxiguy commented

High-level integration questions for mobile taxi payment

Hi,

Apologies for the basic questions but I couldn't find them by searching.

I'm developing a payment system for taxis. The driver has a regular 3G Android tablet running my dispatch software in the front seat and connected to the taxi meter. I want the passenger to pay on a Clover Mobile or Mini in the back seat.

  • Can I transmit the fare from the Android tablet in the front seat to the Clover in the back (presumably via Bluetooth) to initiate the transaction? And then I have to transmit transaction status and total payment back to the front tablet when the transaction completes. I think this is easy between 2 Clover devices but not sure about standard tablet.

  • Can the Clover use the front seat tablet's 3G modem and data plan to complete the transaction? I'd rather not make my customers pay for a modem and data plan when they already have one in the car. Does this put me in-scope for PCI certification? I realize I could use an external 3G hub if necessary, but that's not what customers want.

  • Can I display images or videos on the Clover idle screens (i.e. during the trip when the passenger is just sitting there and the Clover is not processing transactions? And if so, how can the taxi company update the images and videos on the Clover? Do these apps/utilities exist or do I have to create them?

Thank you!

Clover Mobile
10 |2000
Toggle Comment visibility. Current Visibility: Viewable by all users

Up to 2 attachments (including images) can be used with a maximum of 512.0 KiB each and 1.0 MiB total.

1 Answer

Jeffrey Blattman avatar image
Jeffrey Blattman answered taxiguy commented

In short, there's nothing out of the box that's going to give you all of that, plug and play.

We do have the concept of a "customer facing display", where connected devices can initiate payments on Clover Mini. We use this to implement a customer facing display between our Clover Station and Mini. We have connectors for USB, websocket, and others, but not Bluetooth. This is a platform we want to expose to developers but at this point it's mostly just used internally. The method of connection is technically pluggable. While there's nothing stopping you from authoring that Bluetooth connector, it'd be quite a job.

The second problem is that we support Clover Mini for the customer facing display, but not Clover Mobile. Clover Mini is a battery-less device and runs on AC.

If the tablet has a wifi hotspot, yes, the Clover device could use the 3G modem that way.

The customer facing display has a welcome image that's display when it's idle, but we do not currently support video. The welcome image is static.

That all being said, Clover is a development platform. If you can write software that runs on the tablet, and software that runs on Clover and the tablet that can send messages however you want, you can initiate and take payments from the Clover (Mobile).

I would suggest you get in touch with Clover developer relations to understand if pursuing this is worthwhile for you.

2 comments
10 |2000
Toggle Comment visibility. Current Visibility: Viewable by all users

Up to 2 attachments (including images) can be used with a maximum of 512.0 KiB each and 1.0 MiB total.

taxiguy avatar image taxiguy commented ·

Thank you very much Jeff - I'll keep this in mind, but I suspect it will require more dev than we wanted.

One final question - what about EMV certification? If we write code related to transaction processing (for the tablet or the Clover), do we end up in-scope for PADSS/PCI or does Clover isolate the senstive data and transaction processing to keep us out of scope?

Thanks again - very helpful

0 Likes 0 ·
Jeffrey Blattman avatar image Jeffrey Blattman ♦♦ commented ·

No, you will not be in scope. You are requesting the Clover device to take the payment. You will pass in things like the amount, tax amount, etc., but it's Clover that processes the card data. That's never exposed to you as a client app.

0 Likes 0 ·

Welcome to the
Clover Developer Community