Ride-sharing service Lyft has announced that users will soon be able to easily split the cost of group rides with Venmo, the PayPal-owned service aimed at making it easy to pay and request money from friends. Lyft says that, while it recognizes that many people aren't traveling in groups at the moment due to COVID-19, it wanted to give its users the option of doing so when they begin to share journeys again. Users just need to have a Venmo account.
Lyft was launched in 2012 and is one of the most popular ride-sharing services after Uber. Like Uber, many of its users typically travel with friends and family members, and historically its been left to someone to pick up the bill before requesting any contributions separately after payment has been made. Using Venmo's payment splitting functionality, that process is made simpler and more seamless.
Once users have set up a Venmo account, they just need to authorize payment via Venmo in the Lyft app. To do so, Lyft advises users to ensure they have the latest versions of both the Venmo and Lyft apps installed on their phones. Once that's done, it's simply a case of opening the Lyft app and navigating to the "Payment" section in the menu. In the "Add payment method" option, they can select and authorize Venmo. After that, they can start splitting group fares.
Splitting Fares
When the time comes for a journey with friends or family, users can book and finish a journey before having to worry about payment. At that point, they can pull up the Venmo app, locate the transaction in their feed and select it to find the option for splitting the cost. All that's left to do is for the user to select the person or people they want to split the cost with and maybe add some additional info so that those people know what it is that payment is being requested for. In theory, it should make the process of recouping any money shelled out a little easier, although that may depend on how reliable an individual's friends are.
According to Lyft, in addition to paying for rides via Venmo, users will be able to use it to pay for bike or scooter rides from the Lyft app. And of course, it notes that PayPal, credit cards, debit cards, direct banking and Lyft Cash will all still remain as payment options.
Source: Lyft