Carpooling company Ryde launches BTC Payments Option

Ryde is a social enterprise that promotes carpooling. The company claims that they are the first company in Singapore to provide this service, having been founded in 2014 by Terence Zou who is also the current CEO.

Prior to launching the company, Zou was a Partner and the Chief Investment Officer at Newfields Capital. He has been a part of the private equity and investment banking sector for over twenty years.

The Harvard Business School alum launched the Ryde app after “being stranded in town for a few hours not getting a taxi with all my shopping in tow as many empty cars passed me by, I thought to myself that there was clearly an optimization problem here. There must be a solution to this problem.”

This experience and realization led Zou to start Ryde. which was initially focused on Singapore where he lived. In 2015 the company announced that they raised US$1.5M in seed funding from strategic investors and angels, the identities of which were not disclosed by the firm.

The firm recently announced that customers will be able to pay for trips using Bitcoin (BTC) on the Ryde mobile application, starting on June 22nd. The way the company is going to make this work is by launching the RydeWallet and RydePay Coins. When a customer wants to pay with bitcoin, the app will convert the bitcoin to Rydepay Coins, which are pegged to the Singapore Dollar.

“COVID-19 has accelerated the shift towards digital payments and Ryde is set to be a game-changer for cryptocurrency adoption in Singapore,” Zou said. “As consumers get used to paying for ride-hailing services through Bitcoin, we envisage that this will be a catalyst that spurs the mass adoption of cryptocurrencies here.”

The company claims that it is the first ride pooling service in the world that is accepting bitcoin as payment for rides. However, Fold unveiled an app that allows payments in bitcoin to a range of partners, including Uber, in November 2019.

The Fold app allows users to pay for Uber rides with bitcoin through an integration. Ryde, on the other hand, is integrating cryptocurrency natively as a payment method within its own app.

Fold raised a US$2.5M seed round in September 2019 with participation from well-known investors including Craft Ventures, Slow Ventures, Coinshares, and Boost VC. Fold also provides users who pay via their app up to 20% cashback in bitcoin on every purchase instantly.

Singapore is known to be one of the most crypto-friendly jurisdictions in the world. In January 2020 the Payments Services Act 2019 went into effect. This act allows some cryptocurrency exchanges to operate without a license for a period of six months.

Zou stated, “Singaporeans have bitcoin but the use of bitcoin in Singapore is limited. We can purchase bitcoin at some ATMs and through crypto exchanges but not many merchants accept it.”

In April 2020 Singapore’s taxation authority the Inland Revenue Authority of Singapore published a guide which clarified that it will not take a cut of cryptocurrency that is airdropped so long as the recipient gets it for free. The same ruling applies to tokens received as a result of a hard fork.

A Singapore based hedge fund established in 2012 by Su Zhu and Kyle Davies, Three Arrows Capital, has taken advantage of the regulatory clarification. The fund bought a 6.26% stake of the US$3.5 billion Grayscale Investment’s Bitcoin Trust. The hedge funds stake represents approximately 20,000 BTC of the 365,000 BTC currently held by the Grayscale fund on behalf of investors.

Ryde has since established offices in Malaysia, Sydney, and Hong Kong. In early 2019 Ryde raised another round, for an undisclosed amount. The investor for this round was the investment firm Nomad X. The Nomad X director and chief investment officer, Tan Suan Jin, was subsequently appointed the Chairman of Ryde. He has since vacated this position.

The company is now in competition with behemoths like Uber and Grab, which have also started carpooling in Singapore. Referring to these rival companies Zou said, “We run our own race. We were the first to launch and we focus on the social aspects of carpooling. Our drivers are not taxi drivers and carpool to save some costs, meet new people and save the environment. We provide a platform for them to meet new people and do some good.”