Last year, homegrown ride-hailing platform Ryde allowed taxi drivers to join its RydeX feature and accept jobs at dynamic pricing.
This opened up an additional source of income for taxi drivers, while reducing their idle time waiting in between street hail jobs.
They’re also able to accept RydeX’s surged fares during rush hours, weekend nights and public holidays.
Like other RydeX drivers, taxi drivers on the service have to pay a 10% fee for each trip.
Rolling Out A New… Metered Taxi Service?
However, the firm still sees some benefits in the traditional pricing model of metered taxi rides.
For passengers, metered rides may remain more affordable during certain times and seasonal periods, when ride-hailing services face hefty surge prices.
Today, Ryde unveiled a new metered taxi service, RydeTAXI, which will be launched on 9 December 2019.
Ryde will be offering this to taxi drivers at 0% commission.
This means that drivers will take home 100% of their earnings for meter taxi bookings [on the Ryde app].
Ryde
The new service will be open to drivers from all major taxi companies, including Comfort Taxi, City Cab, SMRT Taxi, Trans-Cab, Premier Taxis, Prime and HDT.
With this expansion, Ryde expects to add more than 4,000 drivers to their current pool of 29,000 drivers, which the firm says is the second largest fleet in Singapore.
Users can then enjoy higher chances of getting a ride with shorter waiting times, and avoid surged fares during peak periods, said Ryde.
Taxi drivers can start registering today to join Ryde’s fleet, and get approval in up to 3 working days.
The registration process can be fully completed through the app, where they can upload all the necessary verification documents digitally.
For drivers, this new option gives them “immediate access to Ryde’s passenger base, technology and payments services”.
At launch, drivers can only accept cash terms for now. Cashless payments for metered taxi rides will later be introduced by February 2020.
“We are rolling out new features for all taxi drivers to tap into our network and thereby increase their earnings,” said Ryde Founder and CEO Terence Zou.
According to Zou, active RydeTAXI drivers could see their income “increase by $40 each day” through this new service.
Featured Image Credit: SMU, Ryde app
