Ride-sharing services are one of many new industries that has benefitted from fintech innovation. Now Waze Carpool, a service from social navigation innovator Waze which makes it easier for users who share routes to commute together, announced that it will use technology from cross-border payments specialist, Payoneer, to power local payments.
“Creating a fully mobile and integrated payment solution that would meet their high expectations was a challenge we were excited to take on,” Payoneer CEO Scott Galit said. “Waze’s goal of helping connect local communities through a global network perfectly complements Payoneer’s mission to connect the digital economy. We look forward to helping Waze expand their carpool services to communities all over the world.”
Waze Carpool, currently available in Texas, California, and Israel, is a service offered by the social navigation innovator that differs from the “transport-for-hire” approach of services like Uber and Lyft. Instead, Waze Carpool enables its 90+ million users around the world to connect with each other to find drivers and riders with similar routes and destinations. Riders use the app to pay drivers a rate of up to the federal mileage rate to cover the costs of gas and wear on the vehicle. And Payoneer makes sure that drivers have a simple and flexible way to get paid via their mobile devices.
With the first foray into managing payments, Waze wanted to ensure that transactions would not only be seamless from a user’s perspective, but also would be as secure as possible. “When selecting a payment provider, we need to ensure that they are tightly regulated and that their data protection protocols meet Google’s strictest standards,” Head of Waze Carpool Josh Fried said. Note that Waze was acquired by Google in 2013. “At the same time, it’s crucial that the payment process is convenient, highly localized, and 100% mobile,” Fried added. Waze said in a statement that it plans on expanding the service to other areas “soon.”
Founded in 2005 and headquartered in New York, Payoneer demonstrated its Payoneer Commercial Account offering at FinovateAsia 2013. The company made headlines last month when it picked up an investment from China Broadband Capital that boosted its total funding to more than $270 million. Payoneer partnered with UPS Capital to power the firm’s cross-border, B2B payment service back in August and, also last summer, the company was named to the Inc. 5000 and ranked in CB Insights’ Fintech 250. Also featured on CNBC’s Disruptor 50 for 2017, Payoneer opened a new office in London last summer, saying it saw an “opportunity” in the Brexit decision.