dLocal and inDrive Add Cashless Ride Payments in SA

In Short

• dLocal and inDrive have launched cashless payments for ride hailing in South Africa.
• Riders can pay in-app with local cards, while drivers can get paid out through local rails like PayShap.
• The setup also supports real-time fare splitting between the driver and the platform.

What Happened

dLocal and inDrive announced a new payments setup for inDrive’s South Africa ride-hailing business. The companies say it enables card payments and local driver payouts through a single integration.

The integration covers local card collection, real-time payment splitting, and domestic disbursements. Payment splitting means the fare is automatically divided between the driver’s earnings and the platform fee at the time of payment, similar to how marketplaces split money between a seller and the platform.

For payouts, drivers can receive funds via South African domestic payment rails, including PayShap. PayShap is a real-time payments system, which is a local network that moves money between bank accounts quickly, often in seconds.

Cash is still available for riders who prefer it. The companies position the launch as an added option rather than a full switch away from cash.

Why It Matters

Payments are a hard part of scaling ride hailing in emerging markets. Platforms need to collect money from passengers, split it instantly, and pay drivers through methods they actually use, all while reducing fraud risk linked to cash handling.

South Africa is a large test case. The source cited a projection that the local ride-hailing market could nearly triple by 2033, and noted that cards already account for a big share of digital transactions.

dLocal said South Africa is the first market where this end-to-end model has been run. It also pointed to its coverage across 44+ markets, suggesting the same integration could be reused as inDrive expands across Africa, the Middle East, and Latin America.