What business are they talking about:
"We wouldn’t have a viable business if cellphone penetration wasn’t approaching 100 percent in the United States," Corey Owens, [Company's] head of global public policy, recently told me in response to criticism that the company can only serve those with a credit card and a smartphone. "And credit cards – that’s an arc-of-history problem, where eventually we will get to a place where, regardless of payment method, anyone can use the service. You’ll have more and more people who are banked, and [we] will figure out other payment options."
The difference between Uber and bikeshare is that with bikeshare, the customer is given sole care, custody and control of $1000+ of property. I think CaBi's current system of using the Bank-On-DC to get users without credit cards access to the system is actually a great one, in that it helps those without cards/the unbanked get some financial literacy and access in addition to just getting a bikeshare membership.
Posted by: ontarioroader | June 09, 2014 at 10:44 AM
There's a Barclay's scheme in place in London which i think is interesting, you can "subscribe" to have access to bikes with the costs tariffed (as you would expect).
Personally, signing up to recurring payments from the off is a big no-no as in most cases I'm not sure if I would use the service/software/etc. Secondly using a credit card via a smartphone for a one off up front payment is quite clumsy.
I think going forward subscriptions will continue, but the "try before you buy" phase would need to be much slicker. Integration with something like Paypal would be the answer, but narrows the market from CC owners down to Paypal users.
Posted by: Wayne Alexander | June 13, 2014 at 03:34 PM