Ride-hailing apps Uber, Rapido, Ola and Namma Yatri continue to prompt users to pay a tip before a ride is confirmed, more than a week after the government asked them not to display such additional payment features until a journey is completed, an FE review of the apps in Bengaluru and Mumbai on Wednesday showed.
In an advisory dated August 11, the ministry of road transport and highways drew the attention of aggregators to Clause 14.15 of the Motor Vehicle Aggregator Guidelines, 2025, under which tipping must be entirely voluntary and can be offered only after a journey is completed. No tipping option may be shown at the time of booking, before the ride begins or while it is in progress, the advisory said.
The clause also requires the entire tip amount to be credited to the driver without any deduction by the aggregator and bars any tipping feature that is misleading or manipulative, or otherwise violates the Consumer Protection Act, 2019. The advisory specifically cited prompts such as “advance tip”, “choose an add-on”, “improve your chances of quicker ride confirmation” and “a driver may be more likely to accept this trip if you add a tip” as examples.
Despite the advisory, all four apps continued to display prompts encouraging users to offer an amount over the stated fare while the apps were still searching for or matching a driver, the FE review showed.
Queries sent to Uber, Rapido, Ola and Namma Yatri did not elicit a response till the time of going to press.
On Uber, a rider booking an autorickshaw in JP Nagar in Bengaluru at 8.44 am was shown a card headed “add extra to get a faster ride” on the ride-requested screen, with options of Rs 30, Rs 50 and Rs 65 against a price of Rs 259.75. In Mumbai’s Andheri West at 10.19 am, the same card appeared with options of Rs 20, Rs 30 and Rs 40 against a price of Rs 109.24. Both prompts said the full extra amount goes to the driver concerned.
A review of Rapido’s app in Bengaluru at 8.45 am, showed it offering a slider headed “now you can set a price that works for you” at the booking stage. On an autorickshaw booking with a base fare of Rs 113, moving the slider up in steps of Rs 10 flagged a higher chance of getting a ride and moving it down flagged a lower chance. In Mumbai at 10.17 am on Wednesday, with the app searching for a driver against a fare of Rs 91, Rapido displayed a block headed “increase your chances by adding extra”, with options of Rs 30, Rs 40, Rs 50 and Rs 60.
Ola displayed the message “improve your chances of quicker ride confirmation!” with buttons for Rs 20, Rs 30, Rs 40 and Rs 50, and a field to enter an add-on amount. The screen was identical in HSR Layout in Bengaluru at 9.53 am and in Juhu in Mumbai at 10.20 am.
Namma Yatri, in Bengaluru at 9.49 am, showed a row headed “offer additional fare” on the driver-search screen, with options of Rs 20, Rs 30, Rs 50 and a custom amount against a stated fare of `348, each paired with a progressively more enthusiastic emoji.
The prompts are not new, and neither is the scrutiny. Namma Yatri was the first in India to introduce advance tipping, and Ola, Uber and Rapido followed. The practice drew government attention in May last year, when Union Consumer Affairs Minister Pralhad Joshi described advance tipping as “unethical and exploitative” and said nudging users to pay in advance for faster service amounted to an unfair trade practice. The Central Consumer Protection Authority had then issued a notice to Uber, and Joshi said other apps were being examined.
Namma Yatri had said at the time that the feature was voluntary and appeared only after the request had gone out to drivers and none nearby had accepted within about 20 seconds, comparing the payment to Tatkal charges on the railways. Rapido had said what it ran was not tipping but pricing flexibility, with riders able to move the price up or down at booking.
Ride hailing apps had resorted to changing the wording on its app from “add a tip” to “ add more”, “voluntary” and “optional”. Joshi had noted the moves and said it would continue to monitor the apps.
The August 11 advisory closes off that route, barring any feature, prompt, message, add-on, payment option or interface element that creates the impression, directly or indirectly, that paying more may improve ride confirmation, driver acceptance, driver allocation, waiting time or quality of service, before a journey is completed.