This blog covers every technical detail you must be knowing in order to build an on-demand taxi app solution.
Before we go technology-deep into the idea of on-demand taxi solutions, we need to understand the meaning of this term. So, what does it mean when you say on-demand cab or taxi app solution. Well, on-demand taxi solutions are about offering users a way to connect with transportation services at their call using a system interface. So, they are able to reach any destination from their source location, booking a cab through a connecting platform, mostly a mobile app.
But, being an on-demand taxi service takes a lot of performance optimization and seamless connectivity across the channel. It has to be as effective at the backend as it is on the front. So that it can be always ready to offer services to users as and when they demand for it.
Now, the best example of this is Uber, that owns the most number of taxis and is most popular among users worldwide. And to the most of your surprise, it doesn’t own a single vehicle. So, what makes Uber so viable and acceptable. It’s the on-field performance and the technology working behind it.
Which makes one thing clear, that you cannot do it without a resourceful technology system to support your operations, communication and on-demand offerings at the customer-front.
This clearly requires you to opt for the right technology stack to make it to an effective on-demand taxi solution. Understanding this gets easy by breaking your solutions into different simpler modules and features. Here’s how it goes:
Geo Location
Location services are basic to any on-demand taxi app. For any person to avail your services they need to be able to locate the taxis. Quite similarly drivers should be able to locate passengers and there should be route tracking facility available to make services more prompt and viable. So, what all technologies you need to work on to bring the entire component of Geo Location together to build location services for your app. If you are building Device’s location component for iOS, you need to work on Core Location Framework. If it’s Android, you have to work with Google’s Location APIs. While working on navigation for iOS users you have MapKit to work on and for Android it is Google Maps Android API.
Notification
An on-demand taxi app needs to keep user updated and served with frequent notifications. Whether it is in the form of Push Notifications Services, SMS, and Email, the messages and alerts you send across should be in best of their shape and should be delivered on time.
Notifications can be divided into two functional types. Push Notifications and Text Notifications. Push Notifications can be highly effective as they are more noticeable and appealing form of messaging. But in case the internet goes down or a user is offline, Text Notifications ensure delivering the message right on mark.
For iOS users it’s Apple Push Notification Service and for Android users it is Google Cloud Messaging. Both are same in all aspects, but one – APNS does not allow you to know if the message was delivered or not, however it is not the case with Google Notifications.
Notifications that are sent in an on-demand cab solution:
- Driver: Accept or decline ride
- Rider: Ride accepted/cancelled
- Rider: Ride Arrival
- Rider: Surge Pricing Over
- Rider: Fare Updated
In case of SMS notifications Twilio is the market leader with clients like Uber, Netflix, Hulu and Lyft in its kitty. Other close options are Nexmo, Plivo, and Sinch.
Inter app communication
In case of an on-demand taxi service there are two apps establishing the communication for users. One is for drivers and other for passengers. These apps need to communicate with each other at different points and that’s how the service flows and operations take place. Here, these two applications act as two interfaces to service, connecting both the ends – which allows passengers to book the service and drivers to provide the service while accessing app for supporting aids and assistances.
Here’s how these two apps communicate with each other in different ways:
- Send/accept booking request
- Current location detection
- Direction tracking
- Ride/Fare calculations
- Chat and messaging
- Ride rating and review
- Cancel request – both ways
The communication between apps takes place over mobile data or Wi-Fi. There’s a data traveling protocol that decides the flow of communication. This could be encrypted or non-encrypted depending on the provider’s choice. The data is routed through an application server to the destination points. The quality of data again depends on the supporting system and the data exchange resources backing it.
Payment
Payment is the most significant part of any on-demand cab service app. And it is primarily based on the cashless payment system sourced through a payment gateway. Braintree is one of the leaders in the mobile payment market segment and has premium clients like Uber to boast. Stripe is another payment services option that offers equally dependable and prompt service and is a quite prominent player in the domain. These services also offer a split payment feature which allows the whole act of billing and payment much more user friendly. Another great extension to the facility is payment scanning service offered by PayPal’s Card.io that allows your phone’s camera to scan credit card and this is available for both iOS and Android users.
| Pricing | Braintree | Stripe |
| USD | 2.9% + $0.30 per transaction after first $50k | 2.9% + $0.30 per transaction after first $50k |
| Multi-currency | 3.9% fee | 2.9% + $0.30 per transaction after first $50k |
| Bitcoin | 1% fee per Bitcoin transaction after the first $1,000,000 | 0.5% fee per Bitcoin transaction |
| Supported Payments | ||
| Apple Pay | Yes | Yes |
| Android Pay | Yes | Yes |
| Bitcoin | Yes | Yes |
| PayPal | Yes | No |
| Venmo | Yes | No |
| AliPay | No | Yes |
| American Express Checkout | No | Yes |
| Service Availability for Merchants | United States, Canada, Australia, Europe, Singapore, Hong Kong, Malaysia and New Zealand | Australia, Canada, Denmark, Finland, Ireland, Norway, Sweden, United Kingdom, United States. |
| Open Beta: Belgium, France, Germany, Luxembourg, The Netherlands, Spain, Austria, Italy. | ||
| Private Beta: Switzerland, Mexico, Singapore, and Japan | ||
| Currencies Accepted | Over 130 | 139 |
| Currency Settlement | 13 | 139 |
| Companies Portfolio | Airbnb, Uber, GitHub, Haile, Munchery, and many others | Lyft, Instacart, Shopify, Kickstarter, SurveyMonkey, Salesforce, and many others |
Related Article: PayPal vs Authorize.net vs Google Wallet.
Infrastructure and Storage
For the solution infrastructure and storage to best coordinate and communicate with backend services, you need to put up with a whole range of functional factors and processing entities offering a complete ecosystem of infrastructure and storage resources served by a close-knitted facility of Routing & Service Discovery, Virtual Machines Caching & Queuing, App Provisioning, and Languages, among others.
| Long-term Data Storage | Schemaless (built on MySQL), Riak, and Cassandra |
| Distributed Storage and Analytics | Hadoop Warehouse |
| Caching and Queuing | Redis, Twenproxy, Celery workers |
| Searching and Visualizations | ELK stack (Elasticsearch, Logstash, and Kibana) |
| App provisioning | Docker, mesos, Aurora |
| Routing and Service Discovery | Ringpop, TChannel, and HyperBahn |
| Virtual Machines | Packer, Vagrant, Boto, and Unison |
| Safety Configuration | Puppet |
| Inventory Management | Clusto |
| Languages | Go and Java |
| Mapping Visualizations | SVG, Canvas 2D, and WebGL |
Web and Mobile
Web
| Languages | Node.js |
| Web Server | Express.js |
| Rendering, State Handling, and Building | React.js, standard flux, and Gulp.js respectively |
Mobile
| Android | Build System | Gradle |
| Networking | OkHttp, Retrofit, and Gson | |
| Dependency Injection Framework | Dagger | |
| Image Loading | Picasso | |
| Automation Coding | Expresso | |
| Architecture | RxJava | |
| Logging | Timber | |
| iOS | Repository | Buck |
| Placement and Sizing | Masonry and SnapKit | |
| Crash Detection | KSCrash | |
| Testing | OCMock | |
| Storage | LevelDB | |
| Backend | Schemaless and MySQL |
Related Article: Want to Develop a Car Rental App? Know the Costs and Other Details
Final Words
With everything moving towards digitalization and modern feature components being added to the traditional offerings, you need to act fast on giving a technical makeover to your car rental business. Or even, if you think you are doing technically good with your business it’s time to appraise it to next level and avoid being eroded by the growing competition. Or even if you are just having a unique idea for on-demand taxi app, these technical details should help you with bringing it to desired purpose and shape. All you need to do here is, just keep them on check, compare them for compliance with your objective and requirement and apply them as per your suitability.
If you would like to know more about these technologies, as a leading Indian app development company, Konstant Infosolutions can be of help. Reach us out at mail@konstantinfo.com.
