Russia to launch Car Sharing, Personalization of Services and FacePay in Moscow

Moscow, Russia (Urban Transport News): Muscovites will be able to earn money by renting out their cars for car sharing when they are not being used. The owner of a car will be able to choose who will be allowed to rent it.

The authorities are working on the launch of "popular car-sharing" in Moscow, shared the Deputy Mayor of Moscow for Transport, Maksim Liksutov. This initiative will allow Moscow residents to rent their cars for car sharing, he explained.

“You can rent out your car as a short-term rental service when you are not using it. According to statistics, more than 90% of the time a private car spends in the parking lot. Now a car will be able to earn you money, and help the city to unload roads”, said Liksutov.

The mobile app will be the property of the Government of Moscow, which will “carefully check users’ profiles”, examining them for the driving experience. Every owner of a car will be able to determine who is allowed to rent it.

In addition, the Moscow authorities are working on the possibility of single fare payment, said Liksutov. "For example, you take the metro, then the car-sharing – and pay the total fare in the app,” he explained. The authorities “hope to implement” this function next year.

Maksim Liksutov said that the most anticipated new feature was the personalization of a Troika smart card, which will become available in late autumn according to the plan. “Now your card will become truly yours, and if you lose it, you can easily restore the balance,”, shared the Deputy Mayor. In the future, the Troika card “will become virtual, and there will be no need to carry it,” he added.

However, everyone is so accustomed to paying by cards and smartphones that this feature does not surprise anyone. “The Moscow Metro is moving to a new level – Face Pay. Just imagine – a turnstile simply opens in front of you. It sounds a little fantastic, but this is our immediate future. So far this technology has not been massively implemented anywhere in the world, and the Moscow Metro has every chance of becoming the first. We are actively engaged in setting up and testing and will try to create one turnstile with this function at every metro station in spring 2021”, shared Maksim Liksutov.

The Moscow car-sharing system now includes eight operators: Delimobil, YouDrive, BelkaCar, Rentmee, Lifcar, Karusel, Yandex. Drive and Matreshcar. In the first half of 2019, Muscovites made more than 24 million trips by car sharing.