Lyft’s Real-Time Payments Play To Pay Drivers Quicker

Ride-sharing is a business model based on timelines, and soon, for drivers of one company in the space, that notion will extend to how they get paid.

Yesterday (Oct. 8), Lyft announced that in November it will be implementing “Express Pay,” a service through which its drivers will be able to get paid on the same day they drive. Built in congress with payments company Stripe, Express Pay will operate by drivers (provided they’ve made a minimum of $50 in a day) pressing a “get paid” button on the Lyft app’s Driver Stats page, at which point they will receive an instant deposit of their earnings into their bank account.

Addressing his company’s drivers during a press conference at Lyft headquarters, Cofounder John Zimmer remarked (via TechCrunch) that Express Pay is “part of the origin story to treat people better. We want to make sure we are the company that treats you better than anyone else.”

In a corresponding blog post on its site, Lyft touts that the Express Pay feature makes it “the first and only ride-sharing company to deliver instant payouts.”

That same post includes a couple of additional announcements from Lyft, including a partnership with Shell that will reduce the amount of money Lyft drivers pay for fuel at participating Shell stations, as well as a Hertz pilot program (that is already in effect in Las Vegas) through which Lyft drivers can receive discounted rates to rent cars from that company.

The trio of announcements Lyft made yesterday come on the heels of a partnership with Starbucks and another with the Chinese ride-sharing app Didi Kuaidi; the Lyft blog describes all of these ventures collectively as being designed to “provide Lyft drivers with more tools to achieve their personal goals and dreams.”

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