Blinkee, an electric scooter rental service, has closed down after seven months of operation.

The scooter service operated on a pay per minute service with users having to download the Blinkee app to rent the scooters scattered around Malta. Before their shutdown, the company operated 60 scooters around the island.

However, after just seven months of operation, Blinkee took to Facebook to announce that it would be packing up and leaving Malta because of the ‘lack of appetite’ from local insurers.

“There isn’t one insurance company that would insure the product in Malta. We were looking for a year and a half but they kept saying it was too dangerous to insure the app,” Blinkee founder Damian Malinksi told Lovin Malta.

“Meanwhile, the same insurers that rejected, are insuring companies like Go To and Whizascoot.”

Earlier this week, Go To launched a fleet of 300 shareable electric scooters in an effort to expands its vehicle sharing business.

“We got one company to insure us but when they found out that we were Blinkee they canceled on us,” Malinksi said.

Blinkee has been looking for an insurance company since November but after months of no luck, the electric scooter company has decided to shut its operations and move elsewhere.

“There is no infrastructure that can help us because it is private insurance companies. We haven’t had one accident since opening and we had about 1,500 rentals.”

The E-Scooter rental company operates elsewhere in Europe, including Poland, where it hasn’t experienced any problems with insurance.

What do you make of this story? Let us know in the comments below