Uber now has competition in Montreal in the form of Taxi Diamond, a new taxi-booking app that allows people to not only reserve a taxi cab, but also monitor their progress on the go and pay for the ride using a smartphone, La Presse reports. Users can even rank drivers.
Score one for the taxi industry in its fight against Uber.
Taxi Diamond had been offering a similar service since 2011, but you could only book a taxi cab and select a payment method; users still had to pay the driver at the end of the trip.
While CEO Dominique Roy claims the idea of a more comprehensive app started forming a long time ago, well before Uber hit the market, he admits the controversial app-based service from the U.S. accelerated its development.
Roy also says that waiting for a taxi is substantially shorter when people use their smartphone instead of booking by phone.
Will there be a snowball effect among taxi companies across Canada? Time will tell.