Uber has launched its Uber Cash digital wallet in a number of African countries this week which is a partnership with the fintech firm, Flutterwave.
Uber Cash has gone live this week in Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, South Africa, Nigeria, Ghana and Ivory Coast.
Flutterwave is a fintech company founded in 2016 in Nigeria that operates a B2B payments network gateway for its clients.
“Depending on the country, you’ve got a different top-up method available. For example, in Nigeria, you can use your Verve Card or mobile money. In Kenya, you can use M-Pesa and EFT and in South Africa you can top up with EFT,” Alon Lits, Uber’s General Manager for Sub Saharan Africa was quoted as saying.
When you launch your Uber app, you will see the Uber Cash section proudly displayed above. You can add either KES 500, 1000 or 2000 to your Uber Cash wallet which is sourced from either your card or MPESA.
MPESA integration is quite interesting. For some reason, it refuses to work on Wi-Fi but works while you are on data, in this case while using Safaricom data. It did not charge me for the transaction. If for some reason it doesn’t work, Flutterwave has a backup plan where you can send money directly to the paybill account to fund your Uber Cash wallet.
This can be seen as a move to ease the payment process on Uber. You can decide to fund your Uber Cash wallet from your card or MPESA and the trip fare will be deducted easily from there. This also solves that request we have made to Uber earlier where we wanted a way for us to pay via MPESA, easily. The current system of paying for a trip by paying the driver directly via MPESA is not the most convenient system around.
