Asian bike-sharing,

Mr. Martin, Milan and Florence have been particularly successful for Mobike, although he declined to outline financial details. And despite the challenges in Manchester, the company has not withdrawn from the city but instead chosen to restrict bikes to the city center. “The economics and needs of cities are so varied right now,” he said.

GoBee’s exit from France will raise concerns for others attempting to launch in Paris. Last month Mobike started a trial in the city, hot on the heels of ofo in December. The city’s own bike-sharing system, Velib, has suffered after a roll-out of new bikes and docking stations was delayed under a new operator.

China’s bike- riding sector, which spawned the industry’s global leaders Mobike and ofo, also struggles with vandalism. Wukong Bicycle became one of China’s first bike-sharing startups to fold after it announced 90%, or almost 1,100, of its bicycles had been stolen. Those bikes had only been out on the streets of Chongqing, a city in western China, for half a year. Images of “bike graveyards” where local governments deposit unwanted bikes haunt the Chinese startups.

The companies have turned to technological solutions to limit bad behavior. All of Mobike’s fleet, and most of ofo’s fleet, is GPS-enabled and communicates with the company’s servers. If bikes are left unlocked or parked in the wrong places, the companies will dock points from that user.

Ofo, which is backed by Alibaba, whose payments affiliate Ant Financial provides credit scoring through its Sesame Credit big data platform, has also turned to more comprehensive creditscoring measures. It requires its worst-scoring offenders to pay a steeper deposit. But according to Mr. Panozzo, all these efforts come at a cost.

“The commercial sustainability of these systems is not so easy to figure out,” he said.