Move It

Also known as: MoveIt · MOVE IT

Definition

Move It is a Philippine motorcycle-taxi booking platform, launched in 2019, that operates as the third player — alongside Angkas and JoyRide — in the government’s motorcycle-taxi pilot program. It was admitted to the pilot’s extended run by the Department of Transportation technical working group in December 2019, one of only two survivors of six applicants, and has operated under the pilot’s rider caps ever since. In 2022 the platform was acquired by Grab Philippines, which framed the purchase as a move “to support and scale this homegrown brand”; Move It continues to operate under its own name and pilot slot rather than as a Grab-branded service, with Grab executive Wayne Jacinto transferring in 2022 to serve as its general manager. (Rappler, PeopleAsia)

Operations today cover Metro Manila, Cebu, and Cagayan de Oro, under allocated pilot slots of 15,000 riders in Metro Manila and 3,000 each in Cebu and Cagayan de Oro — the same three-firm, capped-market structure the pilot has maintained since the January 2020 cap reset documented in this wiki’s Angkas and JoyRide entries. As of March 2024 the Land Transportation Franchising and Regulatory Board confirmed that only Angkas, JoyRide, and Move It are covered by the pilot study, then in its fifth year. (PeopleAsia, Philstar, Move It)

Identities

Source	Identifier	URL
Wikipedia	No standalone article; covered in “Angkas”, “JoyRide PH”, and “Motorcycle taxi”	https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motorcycle_taxi
Wikidata	N/A	N/A
DBpedia	N/A	N/A
ProductOntology	Company	http://productontology.org/doc/Company.html
Wiktionary	N/A	N/A
Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH)	N/A	N/A
MeSH	N/A	N/A
NCBI Taxonomy	N/A	N/A
AGROVOC	N/A	N/A
Google Scholar	Move It motorcycle taxi Philippines Grab pilot program ride-hailing Angkas JoyRide regulation rider cap	N/A
ConceptNet	N/A	N/A
OpenCyc	N/A	N/A

Also Known As

MoveIt
MOVE IT

Examples and Analogies

The third lane on a three-lane experiment: the pilot allocates identical rider lanes to each provider — Move It received the same 10,000 Metro Manila and 3,000 Cebu slots as the market leader Angkas in 2019, and 15,000 Metro Manila slots after the January 2020 reset — so the platforms compete inside a regulator-drawn grid rather than an open market. (Rappler, Wikipedia — Angkas)
The incumbent’s new set of wheels: Grab, which dominates four-wheel ride-hailing in the Philippines through the platform documented in this wiki’s Grab Philippines entry, entered the motorcycle-taxi segment not by launching a rival but by buying a homegrown pilot participant — in Grab’s own words, “a strategic move to strengthen the ecosystem.” (PeopleAsia)
A claim of a different safety class: Move It markets a “Gold Standard Onboarding Process” for riders and claims a 99.998-percent safety record — company claims offered as the answer to the safety objections that keep the mode out of statute. (Move It, PeopleAsia)
Verified data (timeline and operations):
Launched: 2019, as a motorcycle taxi-hailing app
Pilot admission: December 2019, with JoyRide, from a field of six applicants (CitiMuber, EsetGo, Sakay, and VroomGo were rejected); extended pilot ran December 23, 2019 to March 23, 2020
Rider caps: 10,000 Metro Manila and 3,000 Metro Cebu per provider from December 2019; raised in January 2020 to 45,000 Metro Manila overall (15,000 per provider) with Cagayan de Oro added
Acquisition: by Grab Philippines, 2022; Wayne Jacinto transferred from Grab to Move It that year as general manager
Coverage: Metro Manila, Cebu, and Cagayan de Oro; slots of 15,000 (Metro Manila), 3,000 (Cebu), 3,000 (Cagayan de Oro)
Pilot status: still one of only three covered firms as of March 2024, the pilot’s fifth year, with the question before Congress (Rappler, PeopleAsia, Philstar)

Usage Scenarios

1. Motorcycle-Taxi Commuting

Commuters book Move It riders for point-to-point trips in its pilot areas through the company’s app — the core service whose legality, like that of Angkas and JoyRide, rests on the pilot program rather than on the Land Transportation and Traffic Code. (Move It, Philstar)

2. Pilot-Program Participation

Move It operates as a data-generating participant in the government study — capped, area-limited, and monitored — that has run without an enabling statute since 2019, occupying one of only three seats the technical working group has allowed. (Rappler, Philstar)

3. Rider Livelihood Programs

The platform builds rider-partner economics around pilot participation — an “industry-first Advertiser Vest Program” it describes as supporting “rider-partners’ economic empowerment,” rewards programs for Manila and Cebu riders, and a published code of conduct with graded penalties. (Move It)

4. Price Competition on a Capped Market

Move It publishes a fare guarantee — a free ride voucher for passengers who find a lower fare elsewhere — competing on price and availability within the regulator-set caps rather than on fleet size. (Move It)

Strategies

Acquire the license, not the market: barred from simply adding motorcycle taxis to the Grab super-app, Grab bought an existing pilot participant and kept its name — converting an acquisition into a pilot seat, the move that defined the platform’s second life. (PeopleAsia)
Brand the onboarding: Move It’s answer to the safety question is procedural — a publicized “Gold Standard Onboarding Process” and strict rider standards, so that every new rider is a safety exhibit for the mode’s legalization. (Move It)
Compete within the caps: with fleet size fixed by the pilot, the platform competes on fare guarantee, rewards, and service reliability rather than scale. (Move It)
Stay the third player, visibly: after the acquisition, the company’s position was that Move It — not Grab — remained the pilot’s third participant, keeping the concession’s regulatory identity separate from its parent’s. (PeopleAsia, Philstar)

Security and Safety Measures

Strict onboarding standards: the company requires each rider to “pumasa sa mahigpit na standards” — pass strict screening and training standards — before carrying passengers, the documented core of its safety claim. (Move It)
A published code of conduct: Move It posts a rider code of conduct enumerating infringements from harassment to GPS tampering, with suspensions and bans as graded penalties — disciplinary machinery made public. (Move It)
A quantified safety record: the platform claims a 99.998-percent safety record, a figure it presents as evidence for the motorcycle-taxi mode’s fitness for legalization. (PeopleAsia)
Cap-based exposure control: the pilot’s slot allocations — 15,000 in Metro Manila, 3,000 each in Cebu and Cagayan de Oro for Move It — keep each operator’s fleet within monitorable scale, the government’s standing safety control on the experiment. (PeopleAsia)

Historical Context

Move It launched in 2019, months before the government’s motorcycle-taxi pilot opened to multiple providers. The pilot had begun in June 2019 with Angkas alone; when the technical working group extended it in December 2019, six applicants sought entry and only JoyRide and Move It made the cut, joining the extended run of December 23, 2019 to March 23, 2020 under equal caps of 10,000 riders in Metro Manila and 3,000 in Metro Cebu per provider. The January 2020 reset raised the Metro Manila cap to 45,000 — 15,000 each — and added Cagayan de Oro, the market structure the three firms have shared since. (Rappler, Wikipedia — Angkas)

The 2022 acquisition by Grab Philippines made Move It the motorcycle-taxi arm of the country’s dominant super-app — a purchase Grab described as a strategic move to strengthen its ecosystem and to scale a homegrown brand — with Wayne Jacinto moving from Grab to the subsidiary’s general managership. Through the pandemic disruptions and the pilot’s continuing extensions the platform has remained one of the three permitted operators: in March 2024, with the pilot in its fifth year, the LTFRB confirmed that Angkas, JoyRide, and Move It are the only firms covered, and that the question of the mode’s future now sits with Congress. (PeopleAsia, Philstar, Wikipedia — Motorcycle taxi)

Challenges and Controversies

Legality Without a Law

Like its two rivals, Move It operates in a legal limbo: Republic Act No. 4136 does not license motorcycles as common carriers, and every ride since 2019 has rested on the pilot program’s grace — the foundational dispute documented in this wiki’s Angkas and JoyRide entries. Five years of pilot extensions without legislation have kept the mode legal only by administrative arrangement. (Philstar, Wikipedia — Motorcycle taxi)

The Grab Acquisition and the Pilot’s Third Seat

The 2022 purchase drew the pilot’s sharpest ownership question: whether the market’s third motorcycle-taxi seat had effectively passed to the company that already leads four-wheel ride-hailing. The company’s position — that Move It, not Grab, remained the pilot participant — held, but the episode fed the broader criticism, aired in congressional hearings on the pilot’s design and documented in this wiki’s JoyRide entry, that the three-seat, capped structure concentrates the market and excludes new entrants. (PeopleAsia, Philstar)

The Permanently Temporary Pilot

Designed in 2019 as a six-month study, the pilot entered its fifth year in 2024 with Congress still debating the enabling law — and with transport groups pressing the government against accrediting more players until the study concludes, arguing added supply would hurt riders’ earnings. Move It’s slots, riders, and even its fare guarantees exist inside that unresolved framework, renewed by executive discretion rather than statute. (Philstar, Rappler)