Thailand’s DES Ministry seeks law to penalise ride-hailing platforms

Patchara Anuntasilpa, permanent secretary of the Digital Economy and Society Ministry, commenting on the case involving a driver, or rider, on the Bolt application using an assumed rider ID with malicious intent towards a passenger, said that under ETDA’s governing law, the Electronic Transactions Development Agency was responsible only for receiving business notifications and requiring riders to register and verify their identity under prescribed conditions.

The law did not yet allow civil or criminal penalties.

Therefore, under the policy of Chaichanok Chidchob, the digital economy and society minister, the ministry wanted the law amended so applications could be held liable under both civil and criminal law.

The ministry therefore needed to urgently examine the fastest possible process, whether by amending an existing DES Ministry law, the Computer-Related Crime Act, or by upgrading ETDA’s Royal Decree on the Operation of Digital Platform Service Businesses That Are Subject to Prior Notification, 2022, into an Act, so action could be taken against platforms, including shutting down applications to prevent them from providing services in Thailand.

This was because platforms still did not have effective screening systems and should screen out people without public driving licences rather than merely blocking riders after they had committed offences.

Platforms also lacked a proper risk-management system as agreed with the DES Ministry.

Chaichana Mitrpant, executive director of ETDA, said monitoring had found that platforms still did not have sufficiently stringent inspection measures as required by the notification, especially on driver identity verification.

ETDA had therefore ordered digital platforms, as service providers, to urgently tighten their checks, including verifying before every ride that the driver matches the registered account. The checks are intended to prevent driver-account impersonation and ensure that drivers and vehicles are properly registered for ride-hailing services under Department of Land Transport rules.

Following the incident, the agencies concerned had not been complacent.

ETDA had issued a letter summoning the service provider to clarify the facts and instructed it to expedite urgent measures, including suspending the accounts of drivers connected to the incident and alerting other platforms to check and prevent the driver from providing services through other systems.

It also ordered the provider to urgently improve screening and identity-verification systems in line with the criteria set by the Ride Sharing Platform notification.

If officials find after inspection that a platform has failed to comply with the notification, for example, by allowing drivers to use the wrong type of vehicle, operate without public driving licences or fail to meet the prescribed conditions, this could lead to an order imposing a “ban on business operations”.

If the platform does not remedy the issue within 90 days, its “receipt of notification” could be withdrawn, and it could enter legal proceedings if it continues to provide services.

Sorapong Paitoonphong, director-general of the Department of Land Transport, said Bolt’s certificate to operate a business would expire on Sunday (May 31, 2026).

If the Bolt application still did not make rider data available for inspection, the department might consider not renewing its certificate, especially as riders in the system must properly register for public driving licences before accepting jobs in the system.

Bolt had faced cases continuously, with about 2,000 of roughly 6,000 cases across all platforms involving Bolt.

Nathadon Suksiritarnan, general manager of Bolt Thailand, said Bolt did not see itself as an employer of riders, but as a marketplace, or simply an intermediary.

Compared with services overseas, such as in Malaysia and Singapore, rider registration processes were more accessible than in Thailand and did not face the same obstacles, he said, adding that Bolt drivers did not work through only one application.

Encouraging drivers to register for public driving licences was not easy, and the company could only support those who complied with the law by reducing commissions to motivate them to register for public driving licences.

However, it gave priority to blocking those who broke the law, having blocked 40,000 accounts so far.

It had also continuously upgraded its identity verification, its police-call system and tracking.

Details on how many drivers were currently in the system, and how many had or had not registered for public driving licences, could not yet be disclosed because they were business information.