Seems like a horrible submarine article. "Oh look! Uber did $Thing! Get in on it now or miss out like a loser!"<p>Like, honestly? This is it? Uber, the "behemoth" who failed to crush the taxi industry as promised, is now somehow going to "disrupt" not just the restaurant industry, but also the credit game? Let's not forget that they actually need to start making money. Are VCs going to subsidize peoples' credit purchases now, too? Why not have them subsidize my housing as well? Why stop at ride sharing and food?! Uber all the things, right? Shame that Uber forgets that it is not and never will be Amazon.<p>Gonna file this one under "total horseshit"
Color me extremely skeptical of this. Uber can't seem to get taxis right and now they're going to dominate an entirely separate business with established competitors? And the evidence for this is that they launched a credit card when they could have just bought the transaction data from some data provider and tried to de-anonymize it instead like other tech companies do. Something isn't adding up.
Content:<p>>Uber won’t be able to single-handedly kill the restaurant industry<p>Title:<p>>Uber's Credit Card is Bankrupting restaurants and it's all your fault<p>I am confused.
I own a food service business - this entire article is a bunch of conjecture and on-its-face nonsense . The only space that Uber is even going to be able to potentially dominate is that of delivery food, which is already a deeply entrenched industry with a ton of local and national and international competition, and unlike the taxi industry there's not much in the way of pricing that can be knocked down. Places that specialize in delivery already have minimal storefronts and not much in the way of wait-staff. So while these phantom kitchens with strict delivery may cause a few smaller joints with poor advertising and middling food quality to go under, those businesses were likely not going to last all that long anyway. Even with Uber's driver network and the power of Data™, I don't foresee Bill's Speedy Chippy going under due to Uber undercutting them anytime soon when it's got an established customer base.<p>On top of all of this, Uber still loses money with its ride-sharing, so what makes people think that they're ever going to make a lasting dent in delivery food? The only actual information they're able to garner from a card is how much people are spending, where, and at what time. That's got its use, but it's not exactly revolutionary never-before-seen information.
So the whole article is about a future where Uber <i>might</i> be able to do the bankrupting but the title is about how it <i>is</i> doing it right now?<p>A classic clickbait.
Middle of the article:<p>>Edit: Uber publicly denied that they would receive an individual’s spending habits from the Uber card. However, that doesn’t discount their previous attempts to acquire this data and don’t prevent them from acquiring this data in the future from the card or other avenues.<p>Undermines the entire first part of the article...but don't let that discount it
Does anyone think this credit card could just be an ad for UberEATS?<p>> "Dining, including UberEATS"<p>I bet that subconscious thought could increase spending enough to pay for any given rewards.<p>Most everything in this article seems like a huge reach. I'm sure Uber wants to keep options open given the rough waters right now, but I doubt any of this is a real plan at this point.
How are they obtaining information about what dish you ate from a single row in a database that details the tax, tip and total? That, along with the restaurant name, is the ONLY information transmitted to the card company.