Taxi fare vs taxi fair

A Chinese resident uses the taxi booking app Kuaidi Dache backed by Alipay of Alibaba Group on his smartphone in Shanghai, China, January 23, 2014. [Photo/icpress]

"It's the fight between IT giants on mobile payment. It does benefit users, but it harms the regular market. There should be regulations on taxi apps," says Sun Junhua, a lawyer with Beijing Huijia Law Firm.

Last week, Shanghai transportation authorities called for a ban on taxi-booking apps during rush hours, contending that it has disturbed market order.

Huang Moran, a researcher at China Computer Network Center, says: "I believe the taxi-booking apps benefit users in an efficient way, and it is good to have 'mobile payment', which is the trend in the information age."

According to the WeChat team, mobile payment and business apps have many users in China. Consumers now pay bills in a diversified way. Apps like Didi Taxi, which supports payment via WeChat, combines services of social networking, LBS (location-based service), and O2O (online to offline), which adds convenience to daily life.

A recent witty conversation between two netizens provides a snapshop of the situation.

A user named "WongPok" tweets on Sina Weibo that he never uses apps to call a taxi.

"Because I know that if most taxi drivers serve only users of these apps, then our parents, young children, grandparents, migrant workers and farmers will see those empty taxis passing them without stopping (when they need to take taxi). True success does not harm the interest of the weak," he says.

A netizen jokingly responds: "I never use e-mail, because I know if everybody is using e-mail, the post offices will be shut down. My grandparents, migrant workers and farmers will never receive letters any more."

Technology and progress always pose such dilemmas. A Didi Taxi spokesperson recently announced that the company will devote 50 million yuan to encourage taxi drivers to pick up senior citizens. Kuaidi Taxi is providing another service, in which senior citizens above 50 years old can enjoy free rides. Details are yet to come.