Mladen ANTONOV
Taxis wait for customers on a street in Hong Kong Mladen ANTONOV/Getty Images

Hong Kong's Transport Department opened licence applications for ride-hailing platforms on Friday, and the eligibility bar set out in the rules leaves room for only a handful of large operators to qualify. Uber and Didi Chuxing, the two most recognisable names in the sector, have both said they will apply.

To qualify, a platform must show a record of lawful ride-hailing operations in cities with more than 7.5 million people, and must have handled over 100,000 bookings a day in at least two such markets, according to the Transport Department.

The rules are meant to give the public "safer and compliant choices for point-to-point transport," a department spokesman said, adding that operators must also use technology such as facial recognition to confirm vehicles are driven by their registered owners with valid permits.

Applicants must be Hong Kong-registered companies with a local office and a chief executive who lives in the city, holds a university degree and has transport-management experience. They must submit three years of audited financial statements and show capital of at least HK$50 million, including HK$30 million in bank deposits and a HK$30 million credit line.

The scale requirement effectively rules out smaller or purely local operators, capping a decade-long standoff between ride-hailing apps and Hong Kong's taxi industry with a licence process only companies running national or global order volumes can clear.

Uber said it was actively preparing its application and would work transparently with regulators, adding it had doubled its driver-support team to help partners through the process, including a merged taxi-and-ride-hailing written test. Didi said it would submit its application as soon as possible and had arranged discounted training courses to help drivers prepare, according to Sing Tao Daily.

Amap, the ride-hailing app owned by Alibaba, called the criteria "practical and necessary," while Octopus said it was exploring a joint application with Hong Kong-listed Cao Cao Inc.

The Transport Department is taking applications until noon on October 30. If the process goes smoothly, the government has said it expects to issue the first licences from late November, ahead of an August 2027 deadline for all ride-hailing platforms, vehicles and drivers in the city to be licensed.