fee Transparency and data safety
Fee transparency goes hand-in-hand with protecting consumer data.
App-based platforms use data to provide the services that connect millions of consumers, app-based earners, and local businesses every day. We take protecting that information seriously, with commitments to respecting privacy and safeguarding data.
Unfortunately, bills have been recently introduced in states and localities that would force app-based delivery companies to disclose customers’ personal information — including their name, address, email or phone number.
An Industry-Wide
Commitment
App-based delivery platforms are also deeply committed to fee transparency. Our industry is proud to work with local businesses to bring everything from food and groceries to prescription medicine to consumers’ doorsteps via transparent, pro-consumer services and business models.
After all, app-based delivery platforms understand that in this deeply competitive space, consumers have a wide range of choices for delivery—and could also choose to pick-up their orders themselves.
Those are just some of the reasons why safeguarding customer data is so important to this industry.
Cause for Concern
Often pitched under the guise of “fee transparency”, these proposals are actually anti-competitive, data-sharing mandates that run counter to our industry’s commitments to safeguard data—and could expose customers’ personal information unnecessarily, increasing the risk of that data being stolen or misused.
Such bills also run counter to prevailing trends in privacy law and best practices for data protection that call for data sharing to be minimized. And for small businesses in particular, more order-level data transfers increase cybersecurity risks (and costs).
Consumers who use delivery apps overwhelmingly say app-based delivery is more convenient than other forms of takeout, and local businesses turn to app-based delivery to boost their revenue, by $32 billion last year alone. If customers are concerned their data isn’t safe when using app-based delivery, local merchants will see business decline.
Furthermore, app-based delivery customers value platforms protecting their data. More than 90% of one Flex member’s customers said it was “extremely important” that the platform protect their personal information.
app-based ridesharing and delivery generate
$32 billion
in additional revenue for local restaurants, grocers, and other businesses.
Thankfully, lawmakers through the U.S. — including California, Florida, and Georgia — have recognized that these proposals are bad policy that will harm consumers and jeopardize their personal information.
But we don’t expect that to stop these efforts.
Don’t be misled by those who package bills like California SB 1490 as pro-consumer when the result would be the forced disclosure of consumers’ personal information and higher risk of consumer harm.
Why Customers Choose
to Use Delivery Apps
Additional Resources
miami herald
Miami-Dade Commission should reject plan that would expose our personal information (Retired U.S. Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen) >>
Delaware Valley Journal
Travis Kalanick’s Campaign Wants Your Data >>
sacramento observer
Special Interests Want to Profit Off the Backs of California’s Small Businesses (California Black Chamber of Commerce President Jay King) >>
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