Each button represents a shopping category, such as music, and these categories are customised during the time of installation of the program based on the user's preferences. The center of the main TAXI interface includes a TV window where the online merchants can push value-related specials to the user, based on the user's interests. The user benefits by receiving specials that are targeted to his or her preferences. The merchant benefits by providing targeted promotions to consumers, ultimately achieving an increased amount of traffic at their web site for online purchases. The software comes preloaded with 1,000 of the best online shopping stores.
Consumers can even access merchants from around the world.
Users can click on the flags to shop online around the world, without leaving the comfort of home. For example, consumers could purchase international products such as beer steins from Germany, chocolate from Switzerland, or designer apparel from France. This new technology has been integrated into the TAXI personalised shopping assistant through a strategic alliance with CyberCash, and will become available as InstaBuy merchants become available over the coming weeks. The TAXI application can be password-protected to prevent others from purchasing products under the user's credit card number. Before TAXI, users had a choice of shopping portals that offered lists of merchant stores connected by HTML links.