Uber Secures Partners For SMB Same-Day Delivery

Uber is bolstering its same-day delivery service in its top performing U.S. markets — New York City, Chicago and San Francisco — through two new partnerships with Shopify and Bigcommerce.

The partnerships will essentially extend UberRUSH’s same-day delivery service, which runs through the Uber driver network, to the wide merchant base encompassed by the two eCommerce companies.

“Today’s partnership with Uber is another way for us to improve the entire shipping process for our 175,000+ merchants,” said Brennan Loh, head of product partnerships at Shopify. “In New York City, one in eight orders on Shopify have been purchased by shoppers within 20 miles of a merchant, which is why we’re excited to work with Uber. Merchants can now offer an affordable, same-day delivery option for their local customers.”

The partnerships will especially help small and medium-sized merchants, which do not have a standing infrastructure to support their customers’ delivery needs.

“UberRUSH has allowed us to expand our business without the cost and infrastructure needs we would traditionally need,” said Shom Chowdhury, CEO of Indie Fresh, a BigCommerce merchant. “We’re able to offer delivery to new neighborhoods and serve all of Manhattan from a single brick-and-mortar location without compromising the quality of our product.”

Whether customers choose a Shopify merchant or a Bigcommerce merchant, they will just need to choose UberRUSH as their preferred delivery method during the checkout process.

On the merchants’ end, they are just required to pack the order, request an Uber and hand it over to the driver for delivery. Both merchants and customers will have the ability to track the order in real time through Shopify or Bigcommerce, depending on which eCommerce company they choose to shop with.

While Shopify has already launched the service with a select few merchants in the three cities and plans on expanding the service through UberRUSH to other merchants and cities, Bigcommerce plans on launching the service early next year.

UberRUSH has previously partnered with other online merchants, including 1-800-Flowers, delivery.com and ChowNow, as well as point-of-sale platform Clover.

To check out what else is HOT in the world of payments, click here.