Lyft Direct Powered By Payfare

Living as a paycheck-to-paycheck millennial has taught me the art of balancing frugality and practicality; I think the Lyft Direct card and app strikes a good balance. The ability to cash in your earning instantaneously without having to pay money to get your money shows a certain level of respect to us riders I really appreciate, and on top of that, we get the highest cash back rewards from fueling up. This is why I made this my official gas card, filling it up with earnings from Monday through part of Tuesday with enough gas to last me at least the week. The rest, I leave alone to collect and cash in automatically every Tuesday night as a direct deposit into my Chime account. Yes, I’m a proponent for taking advantage of multiple benefits from multiple companies looking out for the little guy; these days, you really do have to consider carefully where your loyalties should lie. Generally speaking, I think Lyft as a whole has made tangible efforts to show they care about their riders. Not perfect by any means, but better than not most certainly.

I got a Lyft Direct account after I was scammed! Although I am cautious, the scammer just said the right words and tricked me into giving him my express pay earnings. I decided right then and there to get a Lyft Direct account instead. This way my earnings will go right into my account after every ride and I don’t have to cash out. The card came right away, set up was very easy. At first I transferred a weeks Lyft earnings to my regular bank account. This took about a day. Then I thought to myself, why don’t I just use this new Lyft Direct account to pay my bills, buy gas… all that kind of stuff. It works great! I get cash back when I fill up at Arco Gas stations and I know there’s more benefits at grocery stores and who knows what else. I just bought airline tickets with the card and use my new Lyft Direct card at a restaurant. Works great and I don’t have to mix it with my regular bank account. I feel a lot safer.

Overall I enjoy the card for instant payout and the cash back features. However, I do not recommend for use at such places as hotels, beauty salons, and definitely would not use at the gas pump. Recently, I had reservations at a hotel and planned to pay using the card. The transaction was declined because there was not an additional $10 in the account to be held, even though the hotel gave me the exact of the bill. Therefore, I had to go to a gas station to get cash back. After the gas station, I had to locate my regular bank’s atm to deposit money on my local banks debit card so I could pay for my hotel stay. Then today, April 2, 2020, I had some esthetician services done. I paid the tip in cash. The card was declined again even there was more than enough money to pay for the services. The esthetician attempted to run the card 3 times and was declined. Not a great travel card to pay for services! Lastly in this time of crisis, the places where the atm are located closes at 9 pm. Thus, you can’t get money and at the mercy of gas stations or stores/shops open past 9pm.

At first I was iffy about it. I love my decision to use lyft a direct pay! My earnings get deposited and are ready for use right away! I get cash back on certain purchases, it’s not much at the moment but let it add up and it amounts. I can pay bills straight from it, don’t have to worry about overdraft or fees, it simply just get declined if insufficient! I made the choice to just use it as my main bank account! However, when it comes to needing the money in my actual bank account I was worried about that and how long it would take but I tried it out and very next business day in my bank account! Now it says 1-2 business days depending on your bank however most banks it’s 2-3 unless you have zelle and get money that way. But I absolutely love lyft direct!! No more worries about if my card is going to work or not nor be over drafted! It’s become my main account and I absolutely love it !

I have been driving for Lyft and Uber for three years. And this is hands-down the best addition to the app they have ever made. The old system of doing a cash out up to five times a day and someone making money off of that just didn’t make sense to me. I have never had a problem with getting paid, with the card, or the process at all. It started weird because you could only use ATMs at Walgreens and CVS but now you can get cash back with regular purchases so when I need to pick up something from Walmart I can just get cash back. And no one else makes a dime off of that. I dropped someone off and that money is literally on the car 10 seconds later. I even have other direct deposit things linked to this account now. It works for so many reasons.