Lyft Just Made It Much Easier To Split Your Ride Fee With Friends

If you're using Lyft, there's a good chance you're catching a ride with friends. Until now, splitting the fare typically involved one person paying for the trip and the other people reimbursing them with their share of the fee, a time-consuming and somewhat convoluted method. Lyft's newly added Venmo support changes that, making it very simple to split the cost of a ride.

The feature will go live for users in the United States in the near future, with the rollout starting in October and expanding over 'coming weeks.' According to Lyft, the feature will work by having users authorize Venmo in the Lyft app, then pay for their ride using the existing payment method on their account.

Users can split the ride with their friends in Venmo, where each person pays their part of the fee. The company says that only one Venmo account can be linked to a Lyft account, a process that is done through the app's Payment menu. Users will see a transaction notification from Venmo after the ride, at which point the user can choose to split the cost.

Each person who participated in the ride can then be selected and sent details on how much they own; their own payments can then be sent directly, making the entire process simple and establishing a payment history for everyone involved. Venmo can also be used to pay for Lyft bike and scooter rentals through the Lyft mobile app.

Venmo joins the other payment options already available to Lyft users, the second most convenient one arguably being the PayPal integration. Likewise, users can add their bank account directly or save their debit and credit cards to their Lyft profile to pay their ride fees.