A frenzied cash-burning war between popular Chinese taxi-booking mobile applications Kuaidi Dache and Didi Dache escalated this week, with both parties boosting cash rebates to new heights in their quest to each dominate the market.
Didi Dache on Tuesday morning raised its subsidy of its users' taxi fares from 10 yuan (HK$13) to random amounts between 12 and 20 yuan (HK$15 and HK$25). This means passengers will get a discount of between 12 and 20 yuan off the fare, while drivers get an additional cash reward of 5 to 10 yuan on top of the fare price for each taxi trip successfully booked through the application.
The raised rebate comes less than a day after its competitor Kuaidi Dache set its cash rebate at 11 yuan for all users and either 11 or 5 yuan for drivers depending on various cities and the time of day.
The price war between the two taxi-booking applications, which has been ongoing for several months, rapidly escalated in the last month, when one after another the companies announced they would offer cash rebates to their users if they booked taxis by connecting their bank accounts to the mobile applications.
Analysts said the heated price battle reflected the competition between internet giant Tencent and e-commerce company Alibaba, which financially back Didi Dache and Kuaidi Dache respectively.
Furthermore, Tencent's popular instant messaging mobile app Wechat is linked to Didi Dache, while Kuaidi Dache is built into Alibaba's leading payment management application Alipay.
The subsidies, often more or less on a par with taxi starting fares in different cites, are widely viewed as incentives driving more potential users to their services.
Until last week, Didi Dache had lavished 400 million yuan on subsidies while Kuaidi Dache had spent more than 100 million yuan, the companies disclosed.
The rebate price war, though touted as a marketing stunt that would benefit all customers, has also prompted some to try to illicitly profit from the rebates, Chinese media revealed. A number of drivers have been found guilty of colluding with customers to fake taxi bookings in order to benefit from the rebates, according to Xinhua.
The Beijing News also previously reported that some residents in Beijing without smartphones are ignored by taxi drivers who prefer to get mobile application bookings so they can enjoy the financial rewards.
Tencent and Alibaba, perhaps the two most promising technology companies in China, have clashed with each other on different fronts, with the latest row expanding to the financial industry. Each company has teamed up with a monetary fund to create their own online finance products.

China's taxi-booking app race heats up between Alibaba and Tencent
Chinese taxi booking app Kuaide will acquire its Shanghai-based competitor, Dahuangfeng, according to a tweet from Kuaide on Sina Weibo. Technode reports Kuaide's main backer, e-commerce giant Alibaba, will increase its investment.
Kuaide already holds the largest market share of any taxi app in China with 41.8 percent, followed by Didi with 39.2 percent. Dahuangfeng holds 3.9 percent market share and focuses mainly on the Yangtze River delta area. Another player is Yaoyao with nine percent.
Contrary to the Eguan report cited by Technode, Didi says it holds double the market share of Kuaide. Didi cites this report by iResearch Consulting Group.
Didi is backed by Chinese web titan Tencent (HKG:0700), which means the battle for the country's taxi apps will go down between two of its biggest web companies.
But Tencent isn't the only ace up Didi's sleeve. The Beijing government, in an attempt to regulate such services, approved four taxi apps in August. All other taxi apps were declared illegal in the city. Didi and Yaoyao were among the four, but Kuaide didn't make the cut, which gives Didi a rather unfair advantage in one of the country's largest municipalities.
Nonetheless, Technode reports Kuaide has more than 20 million installs and 350,000 drivers covering 35 cities.