CARD PAYMENTS AND PREAUTHORISATION USING THE FONACAB APP (AND HOW TO SIMPLIFY MATTERS)

If you are wondering why you might have seen a "charge" of £1 for using your card, or wonder why you have a pending charge for a journey on your account, please read on

The laws around accepting remote card payments have changed to improve security and we must change too - it’s called Strong Customer Authentication (SCA) and you can read about it at https://www.fca.org.uk/consumers/strong-customer-authentication .

You will see examples of this when online shopping or banking - you may for example receive an additional text message or notification which you have to approve when you buy or make a transaction online. All businesses that accept remote card payments will have to have SCA in place to be able to continue to accept these payments

Our APP has changed to accommodate this change to the law. 

You might see a £1 “charge” on your bank account when you add or change a card on the fonaCAB APP. This £1 charge is an anti-fraud check by some banks to prove that your card is genuine - the money is never actually taken from your bank account and you will see it disappear from your statement in a few days. It is for your protection as its helps ensure that the card cannot be used if lost or stolen and registered as such.

So how does preauthorisation of your payment work?

The biggest change when paying through our APP will be that when you book, or attempt to book, and choose to pay by a registered card in the APP, the APP will preauthorise the approximate fare amount before the journey and then take the actual amount at the end. This is similar to what happens when you check in at a hotel or use a card for car hire.

For example,

• You use the APP to make your booking and are given an estimated fare of £12.

• When you make, or attempt to make your booking, our payment providers ask your bank if your card is genuine and if there are sufficient funds to make the booking. This is the preauthorisation. 

• Your bank then places a "hold" on this approximate amount in your account so that it is available should we request payment. 

• The pre-authorisation amount is more than the estimated journey amount because the fare quoted is just that – an estimate.  The fare in-vehicle may exceed the estimated amount, or the passenger may choose to go via a different point or change their destination altogether.  By making a preauthorisation for a slightly higher amount this ensures that in most cases, the actual fare will fall within the pre-authorised amount.

• At the end of the journey the Driver will charge you the actual amount for the fare –

o   If this is less than the estimate (say £11) you are charged the £11 and the remaining value from the preauthorised amount is released back to your bank account.

o   If the actual amount is more than the estimate (say £13) then the preauthorised amount is released and a new transaction for the total amount is made

If a booking is cancelled by fonaCAB or the Passenger, or fails when booking (or is marked as a No Pickup by the driver) the request to your bank is released immediately by fonaCAB but It is important to note your bank may take up to 5 working days to release the pre-authorisation hold.  The length of time is at the discretion of the bank and is not something that we can influence. 

Your money never leaves your account if a booking does not complete. fonaCAB do not have any control over this amount, it is held by your bank and not us.

We have no choice but to implement these new procedures as it is the law. You may be pleased to know that fonaCAB now already accept contactless card payments in every car and these do not require any preauthorisation, so if you wish to avoid this, simply book on the APP as normal (select "Pay in Car" as the payment option) and pay for your journey in car with cash or your card at the end of your trip.

You can now pay for your fonaCAB taxi journey using our contactless in car card readers

Over the last eighteen months we have been encouraging our passengers to pay in car using a debit or credit card to reduce the chances of virus transmission

To enable this increased card use and to further improve our customer service, we have now invested in contactless card readers for every one of our Drivers and this means that you can now pay for your journey of up to £100 with the tap of a card, and if your journey is more than this, simply enter your pin number into the reader

We can accept all major debit and credit card types and the readers will also accept Google and Apple Pay payments through your NFC enabled device

If you're a visitor to Northern Ireland from outside the UK, don't worry - as long as your card displays one of the card symbols shown we can accept your payment

Other payment options are of course still available