Ride-hailing service, Uber, will stop allowing you to split fares with co-passengers from within the app starting in April 2022. It’s not clear why the company has decided to give such a useful feature the boot, but a spokesperson has reportedly said that another solution might be in the works.
‘Split fare’ basically lets Uber riders share the cost of a trip from within the Uber app itself. This removes the need for the parties involved to have the same peer-to-peer money transfer utility such as Venmo, for example. Mind you, Uber is calling this a ‘temporary’ change, according to Mashable.
So it’s entirely possible that the split fare option will be back in some time if the company needs to, but cannot find a decent workaround. Apparently, emails were sent out to customers stating that the feature would be discontinued on March 21. But this ‘temporary deactivation’ has been postponed until April next month instead.
Uber rolled out the option to let users split fares way back in 2013. Competitor Lyft followed this with the release of Split Pay in 2014. However, the latter discontinued the feature in 2018 and noted that easier ways to do the same would be introduced to the app in 2015. This never happened, of course.
If Uber decides an in-app option to split fares isn’t that important to customers after all, we are unlikely to see it again. You’ll just have to grit your teeth and rehearse polite ways to remind pals to cough up the cash instead. Universal awkwardness for everyone concerned.
