Japan Fair Trade Commission Report Indicates Possible Antimonopoly Law Violation by Major Taxi App Operators

The Yomiuri Shimbun

11:39 JST, May 7, 2025

The Japan Fair Trade Commission (JFTC) released a report in late April on an investigation into the use of taxi ordering applications for smartphones.

In the report, the JFTC stated that it may be a violation of the Antimonopoly Law if a major operator of such an application arbitrarily favors certain taxi companies in transferring orders or requests taxi companies not to use taxi applications of other operators.

Such applications act as intermediaries between taxi users and taxi companies. Among the well-known applications of this kind in Japan are Go, S.Ride, Uber and DiDi.

The JFTC began the investigation in October last year. During the investigation, taxi companies that receive orders through such applications expressed concern that application operators may favor taxi companies with which they have a capital relationship when transferring ride orders. The JFTC stated that if a dominant taxi application operator were to arbitrarily favor a particular taxi company when transferring an order, it could constitutes discriminatory treatment of business conditions, which may violate the law.

Taxi companies also told the JFTC that, when there is a potentially lucrative order, taxi application operators tend to give priority to taxi companies that only use their applications. If an application operator requires taxi companies not to use other operators’ applications as a condition for giving them priority in transferring orders, it constitutes exclusive dealing that may be in violation of the law.