Uber Hits 500K Rides in Toronto; U.S. Gets ‘Family Profiles’ [u]

Uber announced yesterday the launch of Family Profiles in the United States, available only in Atlanta, Dallas and Phoenix at launch.

Essentially Family Profiles allows up to 10 riders to share one payment method, managed by the Family Profile organizer. Uber says this is a way to make it easy to pay for rides for family and friends.

Screenshot 2016 03 16 23 49 00

When a Family Profile organizer invites contacts to join their ‘family’, the invitees will then have a new option to choose the Family Profile as the payment option.

Uber explains this new feature will allow parents to help out their kids away at college for example, or for a daughter or son to “help your parents maintain their independence.”

While the feature is not available in Canada, and with no timeline for the feature to launch here yet, it does provide a picture of where the Uber app is going.

Uber currently operates in Edmonton, Windsor, London, Hamilton, Kitchener-Waterloo, Niagara Region, Toronto, Kingston, Ottawa, Montreal and Quebec City. The ridesharing company operates in nearly 70 countries around the world and close to 400 cities.

The company also celebrated its fourth anniversary in Toronto yesterday, revealing some interesting numbers from its operations since it launched back in 2012:

  • 16 million trips in 4 years (122 million kilometres or 300 trips to the moon)
  • 500,000 active riders (updated)
  • Average wait time of about 4 minutes
  • 15,000 active driver partners
  • 300,000 uberPOOL trips shared
  • 2nd largest provider of wheelchair accessible rides in North American (NYC is first)
  • 100,000 uberEATS meals ordered

Check out the Uber Toronto 4th anniversary video below:

YouTube video

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