Ride-hailing Apps Face Tough Obstacles in Iran

Iranian ride-hailing apps are facing pressure from many organizations in Iran. After the Taxi Union, IT Union of Iran and the Iranian ICT Guild Organization, and now Tehran’s Municipality has claimed that ride-hailing apps must receive a license from this administration.

Snapp and Tap30 are the famous Uber-like apps of Iran. In a short time these applications have been able to acquire a large pool of drivers and users to their platform. During Tehran’s rush hours when the taxicabs and the public transport can’t answer the citizen’s demand, these ride-hailing applications have really come in handy.

Currently the commission rates for Snapp and Tap30 are 13% and 15% respectively while for taxi agencies this number is between 15% to 20%. Cheaper prices comparing to taxi agencies and ease of use are some of the reasons for people to use these applications. As for the drivers, they have more incentive to work for Snapp and Tap30 since these companies pay them extra money and they don’t have fixed working hours unlike the taxi agencies. But of course just like other places in the world, taxi companies oppose to these ride-hailing apps.

ITmen recently reported that Meysam Mozafar, Head of Tehran’s Taxi Organization has stated that any transportation service company within the city must receive a license from Tehran’s Municipality.

“No one is responsible for the security and the accreditations of such vehicles, and the police and other security organizations must get involved with this issue,” said Mozafari. ISNA also reported that Masoud Tayebi, Managing Director of the Taxi Union has stated that apart from the security concerns, the use of these applications could be a “suitable service” for our society. He added that the union “is not against the essence of this movement,” and that they ask these companies to have negotiations with them about the “security concerns and issues”.

Currently these companies run security checks on their drivers, though they may not be strict about their rules in some occasions. When we asked one of the drivers about the security checks, he told us that the ride-hailing company had asked him to provide a “Certificate of Clean Record” within the first 10 days of registration, or he’ll get deactivated from using the app. He added that it’s been over 10 days and nobody has asked him of any records.

There’s an answer for every problem, and hopefully these ride-hailing apps would examine these concerns.