- Click to share on Facebook (Opens in a new window)
- Click to share on Twitter (Opens in a new window)
- Click here to share on LinkedIn (Opens in a new window)
- Click to email a friend (Opens in a new window)
(CNN Business) - Uber has just suffered a significant setback in one of its largest markets.
London transit officials have decided not to extend the company's license beyond midnight, local time, on Monday.
In a statement, Transport for London (TfL) said it had identified "a pattern of failures" that put passengers at risk. He said that 14,000 trips made recently involved unauthorized drivers who were able to impersonate other Uber drivers.
Uber said he would appeal the decision not to renew his license, describing it as "extraordinary and incorrect." However, the company can continue to provide services in London while the appeal is taking place. Uber shares fell more than 5% in pre-market trading.
- Uber, Cabify, Beat, Didi… the most used apps for transportation in Latin America and Spain
The company had already been through this before. The city refused to renew its license in 2017, citing several concerns, including how Uber responded to serious crimes. Uber appealed that decision and then was granted permission to operate for 15 months. At the end of September, the regulator granted Uber an additional two-month license.
"We have fundamentally changed our business in the last two years and we are setting the safety standard," Jamie Heywood, general manager of Uber for northern and eastern Europe, said in the statement. "TfL discovered that we are a suitable and adequate operator only two months ago, and we continue to go further."
But the traffic authorities and the Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, expressed concern that thousands of recent trips involved unauthorized drivers who loaded their photos into the accounts of other Uber drivers, allowing them to pick up passengers as if they were The reserved driver. TfL also noted another failure with Uber systems: Uber was allowing fired or suspended drivers to create Uber accounts and transport passengers.
"At this stage, TfL cannot be sure that Uber has robust processes to avoid another serious security breach in the future," Khan said in a statement.
Uber said he had audited all drivers in London for the past two months and strengthened his processes. The company also said it would soon introduce a new "facial matching process" to confirm the identity of the drivers.
- Uber fined in Colombia with $ 629,000
Daniel Ives, an analyst at Wedbush Securities, said he believes Uber was surprised by the decision.
London is one of the five world cities that accounted for almost a quarter of Uber's reserves in 2018, along with Los Angeles, New York, San Francisco and São Paulo. Uber recently said that 3.5 million Londoners regularly use their application. And he says he has 45,000 drivers in the capital.
"If Uber finally failed to operate in London, it will be a 'seismic blow' for the company's European operations," said Ives, adding that the decision "could have a great impact on other European cities."
Shorter licenses covering months, not years, have become the norm for transport companies in London.
And competition in the city is warming up. Bolt, which used to be called Taxify, returned to London this year. Kapten, a French startup backed by BMW and Daimler, has also been stirring up.
Ola, a power in India that is also expanding to new markets, also poses a threat.
- Charles Riley, Chris Liakos and Julia Horowitz contributed to this article.
Uber