Uber Technologies Inc. and Capital One Financial Corp. have joined to give the credit-card issuer's customers cheaper rides on the car-sharing service.
Capital One's Quicksilver cardholders will get 20 percent off when they use their cards to pay for Uberfares through April 2016, the companies announced Tuesday. The reduced fare will be given as a credit on their statements.
The partnership with Capital One lends Uber a greater potential ridership as it gains popularity with business travelers. The San Francisco-based car service last June reached an agreement with American Express Co. allowing cardholders to book rides using reward points. And in March, Uber accounted for 47 percent of all rides expensed by employees whose companies use Certify, the second-largest provider of travel and expense software in North America, according to a Certify survey.
"Capital One was committed to a wow moment an offer that's considerable," said David Richter, a vice president at Uber, said of the agreement.
Richter and Todd Kennedy, a senior vice president at McLean, Virginia-based Capital One, declined to disclose the terms of the financial agreement.
Both companies said the deal's primary goal was to help them attract new customers. Toward that end, all Capital One cardholders who are new to Uber can sign up by the end of June to get their first two rides that cost as much $30 per ride for free, the companies said.
"We will be marketing this through a lot of our traditional channels," Kennedy said. Kennedy and Richter declined to say how much they would spend on promoting the deal.
The agreement won't cut into the pay drivers receive, as riders will receive a credit, not a discount. The deal will also apply to surge pricing when prices soar as more people are requesting cars.
