China’s Didi improves pay transparency for drivers
4:14 am Monday, August 16th, 2021
By Yilei Sun and Brenda Goh
BEIJING (Reuters) – China’s Didi Global Inc said on Monday it will provide its drivers in several Chinese cities with more details on the fees they receive, the first big move by the ride-hailing giant after state media accused it of paying drivers unfairly.
Didi said drivers in seven Chinese cities including Shenyang and Changchun will be the first to know details of how much they get and how much passengers pay for each ride through a new function it added to its app for drivers on Monday, it said in a Weibo post.
The company, which is backed by SoftBank, Alibaba Group and Tencent Holdings, will continue to adjust its pricing strategy after receiving drivers’ responses, it said.
“There are still many shortcomings with this transparent income statement that was delivered late, we will continue to improve it and work hard to expand it to other cities,” it said.
In May, China’s state news agency Xinhua said in an investigative report that Didi received more than 30% of what customers pay for a ride and criticised the policy that it described as unfair.
After the Xinhua report, Didi said in a post that drivers on average received 79.1% of passenger fees for rides last year and that 3.1% of fees went towards its profit.
Didi is being probed by several Chinese regulators over issues such as its handling of customer data. The company went ahead with its $4.4 billion New York initial public offering in June despite pushback from the Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC).
(Reporting by Yilei Sun and Brenda Goh; Editing by Lincoln Feast and Emelia Sithole-Matarise)
