FREE NOW HAS today paid all taxi drivers the money it owed them after delays, the company confirmed this morning.

Drivers last week complained that the taxi-hailing app had not paid them, and it missed another deadline over the weekend.

The company blamed a technical fault for the issue.

In a statement sent to TheJournal.ie today, a Free Now spokesperson said: “We are pleased that two payments have been made to drivers today.

“This includes the delayed payment from last week (via our original payment provider) and the payment for this week (via a different payment provider), which was paid a day early.”

The spokesperson said the payment includes a 20% top-up bonus we implemented over the weekend “as a goodwill gesture to drivers”.

“We have been in close communication with affected drivers over the past few days and have worked hard to resolve this issue. Again, we thank drivers for their patience and understanding over the past few days.”

About 14,000 drivers in the Republic of Ireland are signed up to the app.

The spokesperson said Free Now has “a strong financial infrastructure which enabled us to act quickly and implement the payment through another provider as soon as it was apparent there was a further delay”.

“Of course, it is deeply unsatisfactory that this issue arose, we have changed our payment provider to ensure this doesn’t happen again,” they added.