Most of that is specific to the US. Taxis work in other countries without it being difficult to get one in the middle of the night. And the medallion system is unique to the US I think.
> . Uber made the payment process seamless
I've been paying taxi fares with a credit card in an in car payment terminal for twenty years in Scandinavia. If I had a business trip to anywhere in the Nordic countries I never needed to get any cash because everything worked with a card.
I have been living in Istanbul for the last month, and it's worse. With any app (Uber or local) actually ordering a cab takes several attempts. Taxi drivers are constantly rude and unhelpful, cancel rides after taking them, and refuse to take you all the way and just drop you off far from your destination if it's uncomfortable to them. And they often try to get you to pay in cash instead of using Uber's payment, and just plainly scam you, when your bill in Uber is 30% higher than what you saw on taxometer when you got out of the car.
All of that — you guessed it, because of medallion-like system. There's a limited amount of taxis for 25 million city, they cannot meet demand, so they don't have to compete for orders and therefore don't care about their rating (and therefore customer service) in the slightest.
I've seen other regional taxi markets disrupted by Uber and similar local apps — and it always made taxi experience so much better and smoother.
> . Uber made the payment process seamless I've been paying taxi fares with a credit card in an in car payment terminal for twenty years in Scandinavia. If I had a business trip to anywhere in the Nordic countries I never needed to get any cash because everything worked with a card.