Companies can now give you 'Uber Vouchers' for free or discounted rides
When attending a conference or company-wide party, you might've gotten a promo code to take a ride-share car for a discount or even a free ride if you order a Lyft or Uber to a certain location or venue through the ride-hailing app.
On Tuesday, Uber overhauled its discount ride program -- now it's called Uber Vouchers. It's a separate way for customers to pay for a ride. As a passenger, the discounted or free ride lives within the Payments section of the Uber app. You order an Uber as usual, but the Voucher discount or free fare offer will come up as a payment option, if applicable.
To start off the new payment method, more than 100 businesses are offering Vouchers. Some of those companies are TGI Fridays, Live Nation, the Golden State Warriors, MGM Resorts, Sprint, Freshworks, Westfield, and Allstate.
MGM resorts is using Vouchers to send visitors between its different properties, like a hotel to a restaurant or to a theater for a show. TGI Fridays offers a promo for bar patrons to get a free or reduced ride home after drinking at their restaurants. Sprint offers a $100 Voucher to blind or low-vision customers when they switch to Sprint or upgrade their plan. It's not just travel money to a Sprint store but for any Uber trip anywhere.
The Vouchers are a streamlined way for companies to organize customer perks, loyalty rewards, or incentive programs. For companies, a dedicated Vouchers dashboard lets them track the Vouchers that've been issued and used. Companies can also make their own custom campaign with certain budget parameters, pick-up and drop-off locations, timing or based around an event.
Lyft offers a similar system called Lyft Events for businesses to offer a promo code that can only be used at certain times and to and from certain locations.
It's all about getting passengers a free or cheaper ride, so we're here for these updates.
Sasha is a news writer at Mashable's San Francisco office. She's an SF native who went to UC Davis and later received her master's from the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism. She's been reporting out of her hometown over the years at Bay City News (news wire), SFGate (the San Francisco Chronicle website), and even made it out of California to write for the Chicago Tribune. She's been described as a bookworm and a gym rat.
