When I drove taxi in the mid-2000s, payment was essentially always cash. The taxi companies were small operations that basically leveraged their connections to city government to get their positions. They resisted all modernizations because they cost money and because their monopoly guarantee them money from passengers no matter how shitty the service - and it was the drivers who made tip-money or not from service quality.

So basically Uber, not general progress, was what changed things to electronic payments etc.