dLocal and inDrive Add Card Payments for Rides in South Africa

In Short

• dLocal and inDrive have enabled in-app card payments for ride-hailing trips in South Africa.
• The setup also supports automated fare splitting and local driver payouts, including PayShap.
• Cash is still available, but riders and drivers now have a cashless option.

What Happened

dLocal and inDrive announced a new payments rollout for inDrive rides in South Africa. The launch lets passengers pay by card inside the app, instead of handing over cash at the end of a trip.

On the driver side, inDrive can now pay out earnings through South African domestic rails. Rails are the local payment networks that move money between banks and wallets, similar to how card networks move card payments. The announcement also mentions PayShap, which is South Africa’s real-time payments system for instant transfers.

A key part of the integration is real-time payment splitting. That means each fare can be automatically divided between the driver and the platform fee at the moment the card payment is processed. For ride-hailing marketplaces, this is often the hard part, because one customer payment has to be routed to two different recipients without delays.

dLocal said South Africa is the first market where the companies are running this end-to-end model. It also said the same approach could be extended to other markets where it supports local payment methods, including cards, bank transfers, real-time payments, mobile money, and e-wallets.

Why It Matters

South Africa is a fast-growing ride-hailing market, and the shift to digital payments is already underway. Adding card payments can reduce cash handling risks for drivers and can make trip payments more predictable for riders.

For inDrive, the bigger win is operational. A single integration that handles collection, automated splitting, and local payouts can reduce payment failures and reconciliation work. If the model scales to more African markets, it could speed up how quickly mobility platforms offer cashless rides while still keeping cash as an option where needed.