Grab and Wave Money signed an agreement to provide online payment for the taxi service in Yangon

Taxi service firm Grab and the e-payment platform Wave Money signed an agreement to provide online payment for the taxi service on June 29 in Yangon.

Wave Money, the first licensed mobile-money service in the country, has detailed a plan to implement e-money accounts for Grab taxi drivers, moving the cash-based payment towards online transactions.

“For Grab drivers, we will not collect charges for a Wave Money account. After adding money to that account, they can do many things such as transferring money, topping up mobile phone, paying their electricity bill etc,” said Brad Jones, CEO of Wave Money.

Wave Money will provide Grab drivers an account and the drivers can deposit their money into those accounts. They can easily withdraw their daily income through 2,000 agents in Yangon.

“Grab taxi drivers can manage their money and they don’t need to go to the bank and can save time.

“Drivers can also check how much money they get,” said Mr Jones.

Customers who will be using Grab can easily pay taxi fares through Wave Money. 

“Grab drivers are increasingly using smart phones and they don’t need to worry about losing their money.

“This is the initial phase of a long-term cooperation between Wave Money and Grab. Additionally, customers can use Grab taxis by using e-money,” said Grab country manager Amrt Sagar.

The Grab app launched their taxi service in Yangon early in 2017 and hoped that the number of taxis will reach 5,000 by July, Mr Sagar added.

If customers book a Grab taxi for one route, Grab will show the exact taxi fare.

With this fixed-price model, the customer can ride a taxi without the need to bargain the price. He or she can also check the routes.

This is also a mechanism in place for customers to lodge their complaints, either to the call centre or through the Grab service page on Facebook.

Wave Money is now offering a promotion to customers from June 29 to July 12. A customer who uses a Wave Money account will get a code number within the promotion period and will be able to ride the taxi by using this code and to get a 20 percent discount for the first three trips.

Wave Money launched its service in August 2016 and is working with 9,000 agents around the country which consists of Telenor (51 percent), FMI (44pc) and Yoma Bank (5pc). The service is a project developed jointly by Telenor and Yoma Bank.

In September last year, Telenor CEO Lars Erik Tellmann said there is potential to develop mobile monetary services.

“While a majority of Myanmar’s population are still out of reach of services offered by banks, mobile money will greatly assist individual money transferring to help businesses do their payment.

“We will be offering mobile monetary services through Wave Money, a project that we jointly established with Yoma Bank, aiming to support Myanmar’s efforts to relieve poverty while pursuing an affordable financial sector,” he said.

Grab taxi is operating in seven countries in Southeast Asia. It is one of the two international taxi service companies in Myanmar, alongside Uber.

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