Designing the Uber Cash Experience | Hacker News Reader

Designing the Uber Cash Experience

medium.com

70 pointsmtmoore5535 comments

This, like most of Uber's posts I've seen, feels like hollow marketing/recruiting. A design post without a discernable screenshot, diagram, or mock - or diagram just a bunch of pictures of the team having a great time? How many times did we hear how data-driven and great Uber is; were "magical experiences" and "paradigm-shifting" really necessary?

Maybe I'm just being a grumpus, and I do know that many company blogs and such are thinly veiled marketing, but I always find myself hoping to see something genuine and down-to-earth from Uber...

I agree, and yet it was still interesting, though not nearly as interesting as it could have been. I guess Uber holds the cards here, and we have to settle for scraps.

Not a great recruiting tool. Why do people in SF think they know better than those in India? And the broader story is that this Uber blind spot possibly caused its inability to compete effectively in India.

Wasn't the entire point of the story that they went to India multiple times to figure out how to do it right?

Yes, but first, they apparently did not do that. And second, they didn't appear to rely much on their in-country team.

This is thinly disguised marketing, spinning a huge negative for Uber in India into a positive.

The situation in India is that Ola (Indian Uber clone) is by far and away the leader. The cool thing about Ola is that you can pay by cash. Indians prefer cash and dislike credit cards, and so Ola rode that desire to huge success (http://fortune.com/2015/09/16/india-ola-unicorn-funding/), while Uber held tight to their cashless utopia, receding away in Ola's rear view mirror.

This then is nothing more than Uber finally admitting that their pristine model was wrong for India. So instead of a mea culpa, they turn it into a fantasy design trip and journey.

I do admire the chutzpah though. Hustle hustle hustle.

You can pay by cash when you take an Uber in India now.

> The situation in India is that Ola (Indian Uber clone) is by far and away the leader.

Do you have any source for this?

Personally, I have stopped using Ola due to its shoddy app and "service". I find UberGo more reliable and cheaper. Uber hit a bump last November where Reserve Bank of India mandated 2FA for credit card transactions. However, Uber has come up with a nice hack to get around this - direct to credit card payment gateway after the ride. That has enabled them to use debit cards (which is common in India) for payments as well. They already had tie ups with virtual wallet services like PayTM after the credit card directive.

https://www.techinasia.com/india-uber-vs-ola-infographic/

750k rides/day for Ola 200k riders/day for Uber

Uber is in more cities, and in more modes of transport.

The blog post doesn't even acknowledge that a local competitor, Ola, has had cash payments since its inception. Uber also complains about the 'regulations' Well, Uber, ask your engineers and they would tell you those 'regulations' are in place to prevent credit-card fraud.

The design process they spoke about... They just ended up postponing their launch. Ola might have an inferior experience compared to the classy uber but it just works. It's like hackernews... It isn't mobile friendly, nor is it real-time or shiny, but ever so popular because its a fantastic product.

Like someone else mentioned, this looks like PR. Uber isn't even ack that they were considerably late to market with cash payments in India. They don't mention their competition (which they could have, since it has an inferior UX, and the blog post supposedly talks about 'design').

They were on their high horses when they entered India, thinking people would choose Uber because of superior payments experience (credit card), and a very well polished UX... They were wrong. Here's a series of things which I think they ripped from their competition here in India:

1. Cash payments

2. Switching to generic Android phones from iPhones

3. Electronic cash wallets

4. SOS feature

There are other features that Uber still lacks, like:

1. Free calls between driver and customer

2. SMS notifications

3. Guaranteed cab allotment

4. Short distance but cheaper cabs

5. Tuk-tuks for hire (Auto Rickshaws)

6. Call centre customer service

7. Call-based booking

8. Advance booking (cab after 2hrs and so on...)

Watch them write blog posts like they invented these other features too because they flew in with smart people and connected with the locals and gathered data to prove their intuitions when in reality they just imitated a local competition.

I'm less curios about the rider->driver transaction, and more curious about the driver<->Uber transaction. It seems this creates a liability where drivers now owe Uber for their part of cash fares. Are they expected to mail a stack of paper rupees to Uber each week?

Yeah this is the burning question thats completely unanswered by the article :-/

It seems like if 95% of rides are cash, then there may not be enough to deduct...

Anything over 50% of rides being cash causes this to become an issue. Assuming everyone who can use credit always does, since there's about 20 cash users for every one of them the uptake of Uber among cash users only has to be 1/20th of the uptake among credit users to get to 50% cash rides. If anyone who could use credit chooses to use cash instead this number could be much lower.

Uber can just deduct it from whatever they pay them weekly. It's not like every ride is now a cash ride.

Wait, so how does the driver pay Uber their cut? They have to deliver the cash to the Uber depot? And what happens if they get robbed on the way? (Or say they did?)

My guess is that Uber subtracts it from the amount that Uber would pay the drivers for the credit card transactions. They still support and encourage use of credit cards.

If a driver didn't deliver cash to Uber they would probably be deactivated. If they had an excuse for it they could try customer service.

In another comment femto113 points out that provided there's enough credit card fares drivers can keep all of the cash they receive, with Uber taking their cut via the credit card transactions. (However, it looks like Uber's cut is 20%, so it doesn't look like there's enough to make this balance out completely.)

I guess on longer term this is a non-problem, since uber provides the rides and controls the reputation system. So, if the driver doesn't pay the share, he/she gets kicked out of the system.

I was worried this was about them rolling this out in North America, which would be absolutely terrible. Part of the safety tradeoff of Uber is that it's considerably more safe to be an uber driver than a cabbie because you don't have to carry large quantities of cash. I'd really rather not see that change.

Clearly India is a culture where it's acceptable and not awkward to pay in cash. In North America people don't like handling cash, so it will probably stay the way it is.

Assuming that a driver can opt into cash payments, it seems like a fair choice for a driver to make based on their own risk assessment.

...the new learnings

Picked up a little Indian English along the way, I see. :)

I liked the attention to UX. Deliberately breaking the user's normal workflow in order to emphasize that something vital is different is a pattern I'll need to remember.

So how much cash do Uber drivers actually make? I can't believe they don't disclose this data openly. And until they do, they don't have my sympathy. The same holds for the App/Play stores, by the way. People have the right to know what they sign up for, especially if they are putting lots of upfront effort into it.

Umm....regular cab drivers have been taking cash for years. Why is it so amazing when a product team goes and does the obvious?

What would be more interesting is understanding how this has impacted Uber's business model.

The article was very light on details and high on itself. Blah.

Can anyone in India take a screenshot and show us how this transaction looks? taking pictures of drivers, but not showing how the interface looks is not super useful.

Bitcoin question; if cash and digital don't exist in India, does this make for a better bit coin atm scenario?

Then you could link your uber account with your btc wallet.

Both cash and digital exists in india. Bitcoin will find it even harder to grow in india than in first world countries because a large part of the population are not comfortable with using technology.

Look what launched today: https://bitcoinbuilder.com/uber/

They sure like saying "driver-partner" a lot

I find it amazing that India doesn't have a more digitized form of payment available. I wonder when they will be able to have mobile pay available on their phones.

India already does. For that fact mobile and card payment is a lot better executed than in USA. The difference is that it's a more recent happening and that is why they could learn from the mistakes of others and improve things. The problem is that a large part of the population grew up using cash and are more comfortable with it than with any form of mobile/card payment. The younger generation will prefer cashless transactions but being cashless only will leave a large part of the market alienated.

Indian banks are notoriously stringent with who they give out credit cards to, especially if you run a business or are self-employed (which is the majority of Indians).

I'm self-employed and even though I probably make 2x of what a salaried guy makes in my position, I regularly get declined for credit cards.

Some of this is the lack of data. Until a few years ago, there wasn't even a way to check my credit score. Even today, the credit score is an idea very few Indians are familiar with.

This situation isn't going to change any time soon. Indian credit card users actually fell by several million after banks tightened lending norms even further following the 2008 crisis.

For now, cash still rules here.

There are a lot of Uber-skeptics here. Say what you want, but for a company that's thrived on mobile payments to redesign their product experience to accept cash payments is a huge deal. It speaks to the company's (and the design team's) ability to question fundamental assumptions about their product as they enter new markets. Many a large tech company has failed when it has tried to enter a new market coasting on its successes in other markets. Uber succeeds because it doesn't fall into the tarpit of technology-driven innovation.

Way to go Matt! Awesome post!

What a step backwards... but money trumps idealism every day.

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