Uber payments decision: risks of accepting cash for rides and the cash-trip user journey

You are a product manager at Uber, and the team is considering letting riders pay for trips with cash. Explain how you would decide whether to add cash as a payment method, concentrating on the risks that accepting cash would create. Then describe what the end-to-end journey would look like for a trip paid in cash. ### Clarifying Questions - Which market is this for: one where cards and digital wallets are already common, or one where many potential riders have no card? - What is the main reason to consider cash: reaching riders who cannot pay digitally, matching local competitors that accept it, or something else? - Does the decision cover only rides, or also other Uber products such as food delivery? - Could drivers choose whether to accept cash trips, or would every driver have to take them? ### Part 1 — Decide, with risk at the center Describe how you would reach a decision. Identify the risks cash introduces for riders, drivers, Uber and the marketplace as a whole, how you would reduce each one, and what evidence would make you launch or hold back. ```hint Follow the money Compare where the money goes on a card trip and on a cash trip, including Uber's own fee, and ask who carries new risk at each step. ``` #### What This Part Should Cover - The goal, and the riders and drivers cash would serve. - Risks across safety, payment collection and fraud, marketplace balance, operations and regulation, each with a mitigation. - A decision process: a pilot, success metrics, guardrails and launch criteria. ### Part 2 — Map the end-to-end journey Walk through the cash trip from the moment a rider chooses how to pay until everything is settled afterwards, for both the rider and the driver, including what happens when something goes wrong. ```hint Both phones, and after the ride Sketch what the rider and the driver each see at every stage, and ask what still has to happen once the rider has left the car. ``` #### What This Part Should Cover - Each stage for rider and driver, from choosing the payment method and matching through payment, receipt and rating. - How the fare, change and Uber's fee are settled. - Failure paths: a rider without enough cash, a dispute over whether payment happened, cancellations and fare changes during the trip. ### What a Strong Answer Covers - A decision tied to a goal and to the markets where cash matters. - Risks ranked by severity and likelihood, with mitigations built into the product rather than left to policy. - Riders and drivers both treated as users of the feature. - Metrics that separate new demand from riders who simply switch from card to cash. - A journey that actually implements the mitigations chosen in Part 1. ### Follow-up Questions - In the pilot city, new riders arrive, but drivers increasingly decline cash requests. What do you do? - Should drivers see that a request will be paid in cash before they accept it? Discuss the trade-off. - How would you handle a driver whose unpaid balance of Uber fees from cash trips keeps growing?