Some taxi passengers will soon find themselves with more than 20 ways to pay for their journeys as a new smart meter is trialled from April.

The government’s Innovation and Technology Fund is helping to pay for 100 taxis to test out the new "CabCab" meter which accepts payments via Octopus, credit card, QR code, Alipay, PayMe and various other electronic platforms.

The CEO of CabCab, Sam Hui, on Wednesday said that by the end of the year, 1,000 taxis are expected to be equipped with the new meters.

To tempt the city's notoriously cash-loving drivers into using them, there will be no service charge for at least six months, Hui said.

"We have explored with different taxi driver peers and apparently that was the problem that stopped them from [accepting e-payments] before. We are working hard on those, and with the support of payment partners, we want to see if we could have zero service charges at the beginning for a period of time," he said.

Hui said the ultimate goal is to exempt drivers from service charges forever, adding that if the cost was passed to passengers instead, it would likely amount to less than three percent of the journey fare.

"After the pandemic the users in Hong Kong have got used to e-payments.... We are building a taxi ecosystem which will eventually benefit several parties...the taxi driver, the passenger, and work towards the smart city goal of Hong Kong," he said.