Kakao Mobility held meetings on the 13th with four taxi industry groups (National Taxi Labor Federation, National Democratic Taxi Labor Union, National Individual Taxi Transport Business Federation, National Taxi Transport Business Federation) and the representative of the franchise taxi industry (Korea T-Blue Council) at the National Taxi Transport Federation Headquarters in Gangnam, Seoul, and at a hotel in Seongnam, Gyeonggi Province, to discuss solutions to issues related to platform taxi commission and monopoly controversies.
Present at the meetings were Kakao Mobility’s CEO Ryu Geung-seon, Park Bok-gyu, the chairman of the National Taxi Transport Federation, Park Gwon-soo, the chairman of the National Individual Taxi Transport Federation, Lim Bong-kyun, secretary-general of the National Taxi Labor Federation, Gu Su-young, chairwoman of the National Democratic Taxi Labor Union, and Jang Gang-cheol, the chairman of the Korea T-Blue Council.
The taxi organizations demanded improvements to the franchise taxi commission system and resolutions to the monopoly concerns surrounding Kakao Mobility, which led the company to discuss the following potential solutions.
First, they agreed to develop specific improvements to the commission system and levels that can alleviate the burden on franchise taxi drivers.
The franchise taxi service, introduced in 2019, has created a ‘brand-based new taxi’ ecosystem that has influenced the domestic taxi market for about five years. However, due to ongoing controversies, they decided to reassess the franchise taxi business from scratch. Nevertheless, given that more than 50,000 drivers participate in the current franchise system, changing this system wholesale is realistically difficult. They agreed that quickly establishing a new franchise taxi service with ‘lower commissions’ would be the fastest way to minimize the burden on franchise drivers.
Reflecting the demands of the taxi industry, the company plans to actively consider keeping the continuing franchise fees (franchise commissions) for new services to ‘below 3%’ to minimize drivers’ burdens.
Kakao Mobility is set to prepare a new franchise service that minimizes continuing franchise fees by the end of the year, while also ensuring existing franchise taxi participants can opt to transition to the new franchise taxi service.
While Kakao Mobility acknowledges that these measures might pose challenges, including restrictions on data utilization for various future services like autonomous driving and Urban Air Mobility (UAM), the company emphasizes prioritizing the opinions of the taxi industry.
Taxi organizations have also raised concerns about ‘call monopolization’, demanding fair dispatch and equal treatment of franchise and standard taxis, and requested proactive improvements instead of legal disputes.
In response, Kakao Mobility announced plans to gather drivers’ feedback and develop a new taxi matching system by the end of the year.
As a specific improvement plan for the taxi matching system, they plan to simplify the complex matching algorithms. CEO Ryu Geung-seon stated, “We will quickly provide a way to enhance the transparency of the matching system and gain social consensus.”
Lee Sang-jin daedusj@autodiary.kr