Singapore, 7 August 2017 – Grab, Southeast Asia’s leading ride-hailing company, today announced the launch of GrabNow in Singapore. GrabNow digitises the street-hailing experience by enabling passengers to flag down and connect instantly with a GrabTaxi driver via the Grab app, to enjoy all the benefits offered by Grab’s tech platform. Participating GrabTaxi drivers can be identified by a special GrabNow decal.

“At Grab, we’re constantly innovating to provide the best end-to-end experience for our driver-partners and passengers. With GrabNow, our consumers can enjoy the best of both worlds – the immediacy of street hailing as well as all the benefits of the Grab app, including cashless payments, GrabRewards points and best-in-class safety standards. We are really excited to offer taxi driver-partners and passengers another way to experience the Grab app,” said Melvin Vu, Head of GrabTaxi Singapore, Grab.

Get the most out of street-hail taxi rides

GrabNow makes every street-hail ride that much more rewarding. To use GrabNow, passengers simply need to launch the Grab app, select the “Standard Taxi” service, followed by the “GrabNow” option. This will prompt the passenger’s and their GrabTaxi driver-partner’s mobile devices to pair. Pairing takes no more than ten seconds and can be done either via Google Nearby, or a 6-digit code issued from the driver’s app, which the passenger can enter into their device. The trip will then be registered as a GrabTaxi ride and can be paid for seamlessly using Grab’s in-app cashless payment feature GrabPay, or by cash.

Benefits of GrabNow include:

• Gain rewards for every ride: GrabNow lets passengers earn GrabRewards points for every street-hail ride. GrabRewards points can be used to redeem for special Grab discounts, and exclusive offers from Grab’s partnering merchants.
• Experience seamless cashless payment with no admin fee: GrabNow rides are charged by the taxi metre, with no booking fee, and can be paid in cash or via GrabPay. Those who pay via GrabPay will not be incur any admin fee or surcharge on their cashless transaction, bringing greater savings to passengers.
• Easy tracking and expensing of street-hail rides: Passengers receive electronic receipts for all completed GrabNow trips. These e-receipts are automatically synced to Grab’s free transport expense management portal, Grab for Work, to enable passengers to seamlessly track and expense their corporate and personal travel, without any paperwork.

Bringing more taxi drivers into cashless

GrabNow has the potential of bringing more taxi-drivers into the cashless society. Grab’s internal research with taxi drivers revealed that a majority of street-hail taxi rides are transacted in cash. Taxi drivers who cited cash as their preferred payment mode liked the ability to use cash fares instantly without having to wait for financial institutions to process the payment.

As cashless payment via GrabPay becomes the norm for commuters, Grab is introducing the industry’s first Instant Cash Out feature for taxi drivers. All GrabTaxi driver-partners with POSB or DBS bank accounts can instantly transfer fares collected via GrabPay into their bank accounts, and withdraw their earnings at any of the bank’s ATMs, without having to wait for the standard processing time of one working day. Grab aims to roll out the Instant Cash Out feature to other local bank account holders in the following months.

“GrabNow not only digitises the street-hailing experience, but is also expected to drive more cashless transactions via GrabPay. We understand that many taxi drivers are still hesitant to accept cashless payments due to the extra processing time for credit and debit card transactions. We believe that our latest Instant Cash Out feature will encourage taxi drivers to embrace the convenience of cashless payment, and bring more taxi-drivers into the cashless society,” Vu added.

Start using GrabNow today

GrabNow is available in beta and will be progressively rolled out to all Grab users this week. Android users with the latest app version will start seeing the GrabNow icon enabled on their mobile phones as soon as today, followed by iOS users later this week. To use GrabNow, passengers are required to update their Grab app to the latest version, v4.32.0 and above for Android, and v4.33.0 and above for iOS, via Google Play and App Store.

Enjoy $1 off GrabNow rides from 7 August to 30 September by applying the promo code, “GRABNOW”.