Why we’re increasing our fees

When we launched Poparide in 2015, it was hard to imagine that our community of 10,000 members would grow to 300,000 by 2020.

It’s a success story made by you—our members—who have come together to form the most popular carpooling community in Canada, collectively saving millions of dollars in travel costs and reducing our environmental footprint by connecting thousands of people together every month.

But our success has come with a price.

Over the past five years, we’ve learned a lot about the economics of running a carpooling business. To sustain and keep growing our community, we need to be able to pay fair wages to our team, cover our operational costs and continue to invest in the platform.

When Covid-19 hit in March, we lost 95% of our bookings. While our revenue is slowly coming back, we are still relying on our cash reserves and government subsidies until more people can safely share rides in Canada. 

The bottom line is that we need to transition from being a startup to operating as a business, and to do this we need to adjust our fees:

Passengers
We are adding a $1 support fee for passengers on each booking to help us cover our rising operational costs and the losses incurred from Covid-19.

Drivers
We are adding a 3% payout fee for drivers to help us recover some of the increasing processing fees we incur from payment providers. This amount will automatically be taken off each payout we send to drivers.

With these two changes in place, we will be able to ensure a positive and sustainable financial future for the business, while continuing to provide a high level of service to our community and make travel more social, affordable and sustainable for more people in Canada.

We’d like to personally thank you for your support over the last five years and we look forward to helping you travel affordably for many years to come.

The Poparide team