A total of 27,000 taxis in the city of Tehran are equipped with a QR code payment system, but fewer than half of them use this platform to receive their taxi fares.
Tehran Municipality’s ICT Organization believes that expanding the use of this platform requires an increase in public demand and a general appreciation of this system. In other words, the organization’s officials think they should publicize this platform and its benefits, which may increase public demand.
All taxis that pick passengers from taxi stations, or while plying the streets, are connected to the QR code platform to receive the taxi fares. One of the main problems with equipping all roaming taxis is that they drive all over the city, the news portal of Peivast reported.
As taxi owners have to go to one of the two centers at the departure or destination points to receive the QR codes, the significant distance between the two discourages taxi owners from approaching those centers for the QR code.
Ali Alvand, the executive director of Shahrpay project, says this problem will be solved soon after the locations of the centers are changed so that taxi owners can access the code more conveniently.
According to the official, the absence of an efficient payment text messaging system is another reason behind the taxi owners’ lack of interest in using this platform, as they are not sure whether the money transfer took place.
Regarding payment problems, the official noted that usually when a driver complains about an unsuccessful payment, it becomes clear after checking that the payment was, in fact, successful and they only didn’t revive the payment receipt.
While 27,000 taxis are equipped with QR code payment systems, fewer than half of them use this platform
“Drivers only consider a payment successful, if they receive the SMS verification. The first problem with this issue is that different banks have different conditions for sending SMS receipts; for instance, some banks do not send a receipt for payment under 50,000 rials [17 cents], so we tried to solve this problem by sending separate receipts for each payment,” he said.
Alvand added that a budget has been allocated to solve problems related to fare payment and as soon as a driver calls and announces that the fare has not been paid, the amount of the fare will be paid to the owner from the same budget.
“At present, a ceiling of 2 million rials ($6.73) per month for each driver has been earmarked in lieu of unsuccessful fare payments. We get SMS services from the operators and I do not think there is a better service than this. Apart from the occasional SMS service disruptions, what usually happens is that drivers block unidentified sources and numbers with a specific code; as a result, the driver doesn’t receive the payment receipt," he said.
“Of the 27,000 taxis equipped with this payment service, fewer than half of them have active QR code transactions.”
The official stressed that the main reason behind the disuse of QR codes is that most of them are not familiar with this system.
"Online taxi fare payments should be expanded by boosting the awareness of customers and taxi owners about the platform. Coercion or pressure is useless and we do not pursue such methods," he said.
Hesam Maqsoudlou, an advisor of Tehran Municipality’s ICT Organization, said Toman, a QR code payment service, should collect its Q-codes from taxis as soon as possible. He emphasized that the organization has paved the way for Toman to join the platform, but the company has not yet made the necessary changes in its setup.
In his view, this model of operation is not beneficial for Toman itself and harms its payment ecosystem.
Asked why it is not possible to pay the taxi fare via Tehran-e-Man (My Tehran), Tehran municipality’s exclusive app, Maqsoudlou said, “If it becomes possible to pay the taxi fare through My Tehran app, the urban payment ecosystem will become an open ecosystem, but we have pledged to the Central Bank of Iran to use My Tehran platform only for the municipality’s internal payments.”
At present, users make payments to the organization online via the My Tehran app. This platform also has a website and people can use this system without installing any application.
