Uber shows that it means business

Uber today launched Business Profiles on Uber for Business at its headquarters in San Francisco. 

The transport startup is growing rapidly in Australia with increasing numbers of small businesses signing up to the service. 

Business profiles enables users to switch to a business profile that is linked to their business account in one tap.

A receipt will be automatically emailed to user’s work email address.

Greg Greiner, lead product development, at Uber for Business, says the Business Profiles feature will make business travel on Uber “more seamless”.

“This enables companies to manage their Uber spend on one central business system,” he says.

Over 250,000 business trips happen on Uber daily worldwide and 50,000 businesses are signed up to Uber for Business.

But currently users have to sign in and out from their personal account to change to their business account.

“Most people use Uber mostly for personal travel, it solves the problem of separating our work travel from our business travel,” Greiner says.

He says Business Profiles will help combat fraud by providing maps of the exact route taken and the time and date of the trip to businesses.

Uber estimates 5-10% of taxi receipts are fraudulent. 

“Businesses are saving significant amounts of money [using Uber],” Greiner says.

He claims businesses can save over US$1000 ($1401) per employee annually on business travel by using Uber for Business.

Greiner told SmartCompany SMEs are keen users of Uber for Business because of its ease of use and as many small businesses do not have expense management software.

“We have seen a tremendous amount of small business usage on Uber,” he says.

SmartCompany travelled to San Francisco as a guest of Salesforce.