Now you can take Ola rides through Credit

By Raaghav G R

Posted on November 18, 2016

Apart from curbing black money, making India a cashless economy was another motive behind the demonetization of Rs. 500 and Rs. 1000 notes. Ola has taken a major step towards making India a cashless economy and easing the temporary inconvenience caused by the demonetization. Now you can ‘loan’ your Ola rides and pay for them later (latest after one week) using Ola Money. This new facility is made possible under the Ola Credit option in the Ola app. Ever since the demonetization took place, people have rushing to banks and ATMs to exchange or deposit their money. They have been struggling to get hard cash in their hands. To help ease this situation, to help in making India a cashless economy, to make life easy for Ola’s customers, to attract new customers, to retain existing ones and to improve their market share, Ola has made Ola Credit option available in its app. “‘Ola Credit’ is an important step towards our goal of ensuring mobility for a billion plus Indians. Our deep commitment towards the Indian market, combined with our experience in payment technology helps us to contribute to a digitally enabled India,” said Raghuvesh Sarup, Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) and Category Head at Ola. Read more about Ola

To activate this service, customers need to select the ‘Ola Credit’ payment option, while booking a cab. The seven day time period begins as soon as the first ride is taken on credit. The subsequent rides’ bills then get added to it, and the total bill will get generated in the next seven days. Ola said that on the basis of transaction history and user score, the seven day credit could be extended! For example, if someone hires Ola cabs daily to commute to office and back home and if that person’s bill payments are prompt, that person would be give fourteen to twenty one days to pay for their rides using Ola Credit option as opposed to only seven days for defaulters and new customers. The Ola Credit facility sadly comes with terms and conditions, which makes it seem like a credit card with shorter billing cycles. Fortunately, one does not need to pay an interest on bill amounts (J)! Each user can check their Ola Credit limit by navigating to payment options in the Ola App. For corporate users, no rides can be booked using Ola Credit, if the user exhausts his / her Ola Credit limit. No rides can be booked, if the Ola Credit usage is not reset to zero within seven days.

Ola Credit is an excellent and useful facility provided by Ola in the wake of demonetization. Its customers can now preserve their precious Rs. 100 notes for other expenditures and contribute to a cashless Indian economy. There is a big cash crunch at ATMs right now and people who have not managed to withdraw or exchange their demonetized currency notes can now avail Ola’s cabs without having to pay for them in cash. This will make the life of Ola’s customers easy and will definitely improve Ola’s market share, given that Uber does not have this option. It will attract new customers to Ola and retain existing ones. This option will be useful even after this crisis is resolved. People may not have hard cash with them all the time and will find it convenient to be able to take rides through credit and pay for them later. This move implemented by Ola, can even be termed as ‘the need of the hour’ and we salute its CMO for implementing such a brilliant and useful strategy which will contribute towards making India a cashless economy. Read more on Startup News

Now you can take Ola rides through Credit