Ryde gets licence to work with taxis for surge pricing, aims to draw 7,000 taxi drivers
SINGAPORE — Ride-hailing firm Ryde has been granted a licence to implement dynamic pricing for bookings, and said that it is keen to work with all taxi operators here on a non-exclusive basis.
In a press release on Thursday (Aug 2), Ryde announced that it obtained the certificate for a Class 1 third-party taxi-booking service from the Land Transport Authority.
This means that the firm, which began as a carpooling service here in 2015, can work with taxi operators to dynamically fix fares for taxis booked through its mobile application.
The fares will be based on dynamic or surge pricing, where fares go up or down depending on demand. This is unlike a metered fare, where commuters are charged by the meter after booking a taxi.
Ryde's chief executive officer Terence Zou said that the taxi industry has undergone "unprecedented change" in the last three years, evolving from a traditional metered-fare structure to a dynamically priced one.
"This is more efficient as it better incentivises supply to match demand during peak periods, as opposed to meter pricing with discrete peak-hour surcharges," he added.
The firm aims to draw 7,000 taxi drivers to its RydeX private-hire service by the last quarter of the year. With more drivers onboard, this could potentially reduce the average waiting time for passengers by five to four minutes. The taxi drivers will be able to accept both street-hail jobs and those on RydeX.
Apart from being able to charge fares through dynamic pricing, taxi drivers may accept bookings through the Ryde app up to three days in advance.
Ryde has a partnership with Singapore's largest taxi operator ComfortDelGro, which allows users to book a Comfort or CityCab taxi through the Ryde app.
Five other taxi operators — SMRT Taxis, Prime Taxi, Premier Taxis, Trans-Cab and HDT Singapore Taxi –- are tied to exclusive agreements they struck with third-party booking app Grab, which launched the dynamic pricing feature last March through JustGrab.
Earlier last month, the Competition and Consumer Commission of Singapore ruled that the sale of Uber's South-east Asia's ride-hailing business to Grab had led to a "substantial lessening of competition" and price hikes for Grab rides.
It proposed several remedies to restore competition in the market, which include removing exclusivity obligations and lock-in periods for drivers, and having Grab maintain its pricing algorithm and commission rates before the merger.
Ryde said on Thursday that it is open to working with all taxi operators on a non-exclusive basis, to provide an alternative source of bookings for taxi drivers to boost their earnings.
It also said that it has approached the Public Transport Council (PTC) to get taxis to accept its dynamic fixed fares and expects to roll out the feature to all taxi drivers by next month.
A spokesperson from PTC said that Ryde had informed the council of its third-party taxi-booking service licence and that the firm will be approaching taxi operators to offer bookings using dynamic pricing through the app.
So far, there has been no formal application by taxi operators for this service, the spokesperson said.
When contacted, Prime Taxi and HDT Singapore Taxi had no comments about Ryde's offer to work with taxi operators, while SMRT Taxis, Trans-Cab and Premier Taxis have not responded to questions.
TODAY understands that Grab's exclusive agreements with the five operators still stand.
