In Riyadh there was a case of a driver who picked up a passenger who had arranged the journey through an app, with the passenger’s card details already stored and the fare already displayed on the screen. Yet at the end of the trip the passenger still paid in cash. This was not due to any fault with the app or because the card had failed; he just preferred to do it that way, and many hundreds of thousands of other riders in the area have the same preference. It is precisely because of this one habit, which is carried out in Cairo, Dubai, Amman and in dozens of other cities, that cash payments in ride-hailing apps remain one of the most important design decisions that any operator in the Middle East has to get right.

Why Cash Still Rules the Streets

In a large number of Western markets, cards and digital wallets immediately took the place of ride-hailing services. However, in a great deal of the Middle East this shift did not take place entirely, and there are valid reasons for this.

 What This Means for App Design

A ride-hailing app built only around card payments is already starting from the wrong assumption in this region. Building a true cash payment ride-hailing app means rethinking several parts of the experience most Western-built apps take for granted. 

Confirming the Fare Before the Ride Starts

Before the journey starts, riders want to know the exact amount of money that will be involved when the payment is made in cash. A cash payment taxi app should display a clear and fixed fare prior to the start of the trip, not an estimate that changes after the journey has already started. It is this one feature that gets rid of most of the trouble that cash payments would otherwise cause.

Also Read: 5 Popular Payment Gateways to Improve Your Taxi Booking App

Giving Drivers a Way to Track Cash Collected

Drivers who carry out several cash trips each day need a simple method of seeing how much they have collected without having to work out the figures themselves. Good ride-hailing payment methods built into the driver app track cash totals automatically keep track of the cash totals, so that at the end of a shift the driver always knows how much is due to the platform and how much is already theirs to keep.

Letting Riders Choose, Not Forcing a Method

The best apps in the area allow riders to choose between cash, card, or digital wallet when they book a ride and then switch among these options from one journey to the next. Imposing just one method particularly requiring the use of cards on a market which still relies heavily on cash is one of the quickest ways for a Middle East ride-hailing app operating to lose its riders to a competitor that provides greater flexibility.

A Story From Cairo

A dispatcher from Cairo once explained the situation during the early stages of introducing card payments throughout her fleet. People who had used it once usually returned to paying with cash the following time they booked a ride. This was not due to a lack of trust in the technology; rather it was a matter of habit, a sense of comfort, and in a number of cases simply because they did not want a card linked to an app which kept track of their daily movements.

This Is Exactly Where UnicoTaxi Comes In

It is precisely for reasons such as the one from Cairo that cash should not be treated as a secondary feature hastily added to an application which is primarily designed for card payments. UnicoTaxi was from the beginning designed with this situation in mind, not something that was added later as a last resort.

When booking a ride, passengers can select cash, card, or digital wallet without having to go through any additional steps, and none of the payment methods is presented as being more favourable than the others. All trips made with cash are automatically recorded on the driver’s side, meaning both the driver and the dispatcher have access to a running total without it being necessary for anyone to carry out manual calculations at the end of a shift. The fare estimates become fixed clearly before the journey starts, which is most important for riders who are paying in cash and need to know the amount in advance.

Why This Matters Beyond the Middle East

People who own taxis and those who are CEOs in the United States may think that this issue only applies to fleets that operate abroad. That assumption is very wrong, In many U.S. cities there are large communities of immigrants and people from diaspora groups throughout the Middle East, South Asia, and Latin America, and in these groups cash is still preferred. A taxi app that is designed solely for card payments can therefore lose out on a whole group of passengers who just want the chance to pay in the way they are used to.

Final Thoughts

Cash is not vanishing from the ride-hailing industry in the Middle East, and acting as if it results in apps that annoy the riders that the companies are attempting to serve. The fleets that are succeeding in winning riders in this area are those that have been integrating cash and digital payments from the very beginning, rather than viewing cash as a problem to phase out slowly. The operators who run UnicoTaxi are already in a position to provide this flexibility, no matter where their riders are or how they prefer to pay.

Frequently Asked Questions

1. Does UnicoTaxi provide the option of paying in cash together with card and digital wallet payments?

Yes, when booking riders have the option to pay by cash, by card, or by using a digital wallet, and drivers automatically see each cash transaction logged in the same dashboard as the digital payments.

2. Why do so many riders in the Middle East still prefer to use cash rather than cards?

The reason people continue to prefer cash is that they have limited access to bank accounts, are comfortable handling money in person, and have concerns about the details of cards that are saved.

4. Is assistance with cash payments only available to fleets operating in the Middle East?