These terms govern your company's use of Sri Lanka TaxiList. Applying to register means you accept them. Section 4 places the whole of the employment relationship with your drivers on you, and section 10 limits what you can claim from us — read both before you apply.
What Sri Lanka TaxiList is
Sri Lanka TaxiList is a taxi hire marketplace. It is not a taxi hire provider.
We introduce customers to independent drivers and to licensed transport operators. We do not own a single vehicle, we do not employ a single driver, we do not dispatch, and we never carry a passenger. When somebody books, the journey is provided by the driver or operator they chose — not by us.
Everything to do with providing the transport therefore sits with that provider: the vehicle and its condition, the driver and their licence, the insurance, the fleet, the company behind it, and everything that happens on the road. This is not a disclaimer bolted on at the end. It is what the business is, and every clause below follows from it.
Our part is the introduction: showing the vehicle, calculating the fare from the rates the provider set, passing on the booking, and taking a commission when the journey is completed. If we do that part badly, that is ours. Everything else belongs to the provider.
1. Who this agreement is between
This agreement is between your company ("you", "the operator") and Sri Lanka TaxiList ("we", "us", "the platform"). The person who applied warrants that they are authorised to bind the company.
It begins when we approve your application and continues until either of us ends it under section 13.
2. What we do, and what we do not do
We operate a marketplace. We list your vehicles and drivers, calculate fares from the rates you set, present them to customers, and pass you the bookings customers make. That is the whole of our service.
We are not a taxi company. We do not own vehicles, employ drivers, dispatch, or carry passengers. The contract of carriage is between the customer and you.
We are not your agent, your partner, or party to any joint venture with you, and neither of us may hold the other out as such.
3. Who is responsible for what
The detail follows; where the detail and this table appear to differ, the detailed clause governs.
| Responsibility | Owner |
|---|---|
| Employing, paying and managing drivers | Operator |
| EPF, ETF, gratuity, leave, termination, workmen's compensation | Operator |
| Checking a driver's licence is genuine and current | Operator |
| Vehicle ownership, roadworthiness, fitness, revenue licence | Operator |
| Hire-and-reward insurance on every listed vehicle | Operator |
| Accuracy of seats, luggage capacity and vehicle class | Operator |
| Setting the rates fares are calculated from | Operator |
| Performing the journey, and everything that happens on it | Operator |
| The contract of carriage with the passenger | Operator |
| Company tax, and any tax on driver earnings | Operator |
| Recording document expiry and withdrawing lapsed vehicles | Platform |
| Calculating and displaying fares from your rates | Platform |
| Passing on accepted bookings | Platform |
| Deducting commission and settling the balance | Platform |
| Assessing whether your insurance is adequate | Nobody but you — see 9.3 |
4. Your drivers are your responsibility
This is the most important section in this agreement.
4.1 The employment relationship is yours alone
Every person who drives under your account is engaged by you, whether as an employee or a contractor. You alone are responsible for:
- wages, salary, overtime and any other payment due to them;
- contributions to the Employees' Provident Fund and the Employees' Trust Fund;
- paid leave, sick pay, maternity and paternity entitlements;
- gratuity, notice, redundancy and lawful termination;
- workmen's compensation and any insurance covering them as your worker;
- deducting and remitting any tax due on their earnings;
- compliance with the Shop and Office Employees Act, the Wages Boards Ordinance, the Termination of Employment of Workmen Act, and every other enactment governing their engagement.
We pay your drivers nothing, and no payment we make to you is a payment to them.
4.2 Indemnity for employment claims
You will indemnify us in full, and keep us indemnified, against every claim, award, settlement, fine, contribution, back-payment, interest, legal cost and expense we incur arising from an assertion — by a driver, by a former driver, by the Commissioner of Labour, by the Employees' Provident Fund, by the Inland Revenue Department, by any tribunal or by any other authority — that we are or were the employer of any person driving under your account, or that we owe any employment-related sum in respect of them.
This indemnity survives the end of this agreement and is not limited by section 10.
4.3 Checking your drivers
You are responsible for satisfying yourself that every driver you add holds a genuine, current licence for the class of vehicle, is medically fit, and has no conviction that would make them unsuitable to carry passengers. Our recording a document's expiry date is an administrative check on a date. It is not verification that the document is genuine, and you may not rely on it as one.
You must remove a driver from the platform immediately if their licence is suspended or withdrawn, if they are charged with an offence involving a vehicle, dishonesty or violence, or if you dismiss them.
5. Vehicles
Every vehicle you list must be owned by you or lawfully at your disposal, roadworthy, and licensed to carry passengers for hire.
The class, seat count and luggage capacity you record must be accurate. A customer books on the strength of them, and a vehicle that cannot carry what was booked is a failure you are responsible for. You must keep insurance, fitness and revenue licence details current; the platform withdraws a vehicle from search when a recorded date passes.
6. Rates, fares and commission
You set the rates from which the platform calculates fares. The fare shown to a customer is binding on you once they book it. Neither you nor your driver may ask a customer for more than the quoted fare, or ask a customer to pay outside the platform to avoid commission.
We deduct commission from completed bookings at the rate in your contract. Where none is agreed, the standard rate is 15%. Commission is taken from the fare, not added to it. We will give you thirty days' written notice before changing a standard rate; a rate agreed in your contract does not change without your agreement.
7. Settlement
We settle the fare less commission to the account you register, on the cycle stated in your contract. We may withhold or set off a payment while a booking is disputed, while a chargeback or refund is outstanding, where a customer has not been carried, or where we have reasonable grounds to believe a booking was not genuine.
Query any statement within thirty days. After that it is taken as agreed, save for manifest error.
8. Service standards
Once a booking is accepted you will perform it: the right vehicle, at the stated time and place, by a driver approved on the platform. You will not sub-contract a booking to a company that is not registered here.
Persistent late cancellation, non-arrival, or complaints upheld against you may lead to suspension under section 13. We will tell you what the problem is and give you a reasonable chance to fix it, except where a passenger is at immediate risk.
9. Insurance
9.1 What you must hold
For every listed vehicle, throughout the time it is listed: third-party insurance as required by the Motor Traffic Act, and cover that expressly extends to carrying passengers for hire and reward. You must also hold any insurance required for your drivers as your workers.
A private, domestic or social-use policy does not cover carrying paying passengers. If a vehicle is used on the platform without hire-and-reward cover, your insurer may refuse the claim and the whole cost of an accident falls on you.
9.2 Evidence
You must produce the policy on request and on each renewal, and tell us within twenty-four hours if a policy is cancelled, lapses, is refused renewal, or is varied so hire and reward is no longer covered. The vehicle must stop taking bookings immediately.
9.3 What we do not do
We record the expiry date you give us and withdraw the vehicle when it passes. We do not read your policies, assess whether cover is adequate, or verify that it extends to hire and reward. Listing your vehicle is not a statement that it is insured. We hold no policy that responds to a claim against you.
10. Liability
10.1 What you carry
You are responsible for everything arising from the journeys carried out under your account: injury to any person, loss of or damage to property, and any claim by a passenger, a third party, an insurer or an authority.
You will indemnify us against every claim, loss, fine, penalty and cost we incur because of an act or omission by you, your drivers, or anyone else using your account — including an accident, an uninsured or unlicensed journey, a traffic or criminal offence, a data breach on your side, or a breach of these terms.
10.2 What we carry
We are responsible for operating the platform with reasonable care and skill, calculating fares correctly from the rates you set, passing on accepted bookings, and settling what is due to you.
We are not responsible for: anything that happens during a journey; the acts of your drivers, your customers or third parties; the condition of any vehicle; or loss of profit, revenue, business, goodwill or anticipated savings, whether arising from a fault in the platform, a suspension, a lack of bookings, or otherwise.
We do not guarantee any volume of bookings, or any at all.
10.3 The cap
Where we are found liable to you despite the above, our total liability for all claims in any twelve-month period is limited to the commission we actually received from your bookings in that period. We are not liable for indirect or consequential loss.
Nothing here limits liability for death or personal injury caused by our negligence, for fraud, or for anything else that cannot lawfully be limited. The indemnities you give us are not subject to this cap.
11. Claims — who answers for what
Section 10 sets out the principle. This section applies it to the kinds of claim that actually arise, so that nothing falls into a gap. In every case below the claim lies against the provider of the transport — the driver, or the operator that engaged them — and not against the platform, except where this agreement expressly says otherwise.
| Claim | Answered by |
|---|---|
| Death or injury to a passenger, a pedestrian or any third party | Driver and operator |
| Damage to another vehicle or to any property in a collision | Driver and operator |
| Damage to, or loss of, a passenger's luggage or belongings | Driver and operator |
| Theft from a passenger, or of a passenger's property | Driver and operator |
| Assault, harassment, discrimination or misconduct by a driver | Driver and operator |
| Assault or misconduct by a passenger against a driver | The passenger |
| An insurer refusing a claim because of how the vehicle was used | Driver and operator |
| Driving uninsured, unlicensed, or otherwise unlawfully | Driver and operator |
| Traffic offences, fines, penalties and prosecutions | Driver |
| Criminal acts committed in connection with a journey | The person who committed them |
| A vehicle that is unroadworthy, unfit or wrongly licensed | Vehicle owner |
| A vehicle that could not carry the passengers or luggage booked | Operator |
| Late arrival, non-arrival, or a missed onward connection | Driver and operator |
| A journey abandoned part-way | Driver and operator |
| Wages, EPF, ETF, gratuity, leave, termination, workmen's compensation | Operator |
| Income tax on driver earnings | Driver, and the operator where it must deduct |
| Company tax, VAT and regulatory penalties of the provider | Operator |
| Licensing or regulatory action against a vehicle or a driver | Driver and operator |
| Misuse of customer contact details given to perform a booking | Whoever misused them |
| A fare quoted wrongly by the platform against recorded rates | Platform |
| A booking accepted but never passed on by the platform | Platform |
| Commission wrongly deducted or a settlement wrongly calculated | Platform |
Where a claim is brought against us that this table places with somebody else, the indemnities in this agreement apply and we will look to that person for the whole of it, including our legal costs.
This table is not exhaustive. A claim not listed is answered by whoever, on the principle in section 10, is responsible for the thing that caused it — and the fact that the platform introduced the parties does not make it ours.
12. Data
Each of us is a controller of the personal data we hold. You are responsible for the lawful handling of your drivers' and employees' data; we are responsible for the platform's. Both of us will comply with the Personal Data Protection Act No. 9 of 2022.
Customer contact details are provided to you to carry out a booking and for nothing else. You may not use them for marketing, sell or share them, or keep them longer than you need them. A breach of this clause ends the agreement immediately.
13. Confidentiality and non-circumvention
Rates, commission terms and volumes are confidential to each of us. You may not solicit a customer introduced through the platform to book outside it, and you may not use the platform to advertise a way of contacting you directly.
14. Suspension and termination
Either of us may end this agreement on thirty days' written notice.
We may suspend or end it immediately where insurance or a licence has lapsed, where a passenger is at risk, where you are insolvent, where you have breached section 11 or 12, or where you are in material breach and have not fixed it within fourteen days of being asked.
On termination: bookings already accepted must still be performed; sums owed either way remain due; and sections 4.2, 10, 11 and 12 continue to apply.
15. Changes
We may change these terms on thirty days' written notice. If a change materially disadvantages you, you may end the agreement before it takes effect without penalty. Continuing to accept bookings afterwards means you accept the change.
16. Disputes and governing law
Raise a dispute with us first; most are settled that way. These terms are governed by the law of Sri Lanka and the courts of Sri Lanka have exclusive jurisdiction.
17. The rest
If any part of these terms is unenforceable, the rest continues. Not enforcing something once does not give it up. You may not assign this agreement without our written consent; we may assign it to a group company or a successor. There are no third-party beneficiaries. This agreement, with your contract, is the whole of what is agreed between us.