What is U drink I drive all about?

U drink I drive came into business to offer a chauffeur-on-call service to partygoers. Our mission is to lower road accidents caused by drunk-driving and help save people’s lives.

Road accidents caused by drunk-driving in Thailand still remains high despite all the awareness campaigns that have been going around to combat the situation for years. Findings from the World Health Organization shows that as much as 40% of road accidents in Thailand is caused by drunk-driving.

We have been in business for over 3 years and are currently serving more than 5000 trips each month.

Any plans to scale your business?

Certainly. We started off with U drink I drive and now expanded into a 24-hour service called U sit I drive. We saw a high demand for professional chauffeurs who could drive customer’s cars and run errands on their behalf. People ask us to take their car in for maintenance, take their parents to hospital, or one of the trips I can remember very well is a client who lost her contact lenses and couldn’t continue driving. She requested for a driver and we took her home.

We also see opportunity in expanding our service to other large cities in Thailand, for example Chiangmai.

What’s your goal?

Lowering the number of road accidents caused by drunk-driving is what we aim to do. Currently, we work hand in hand with government organizations; the Don’t Drive Drunk Foundation and the Department of Probation among others to raise awareness on drinking responsibly and driving safely.

Our business success is not defined by the increase in application users, but reduced road accidents caused by drunk-driving. Ultimately, we want to see zero drunk drivers behind the wheel.

U drink I drive has served more than 100,000 trips over the past 3 years, and we're confident that the service has helped prevent road accidents and loss.

Choosing a payment gateway for your app

When choosing a payment gateway for the app, we had a few key features on the checklist.

Most important is that the payment gateway offers a seamless payment experience for our customers. We needed a token-on-file solution. The payment process needs to be kept short and quick. A redirect payment flow, for example, would most definitely turn our customers away. People who use our service aren’t always sober 😝 Opening up the app and scheduling a ride is tough enough, let alone punching down card numbers, CVV codes and going through everything else.

Second on our checklist is security. We learnt that Omise meets payment industry standards and is currently powering payments for major brands in Thailand.

How has the experience with Omise been?

Omise has been powering online payments for the U drink I drive app from day one, and ever since the experience has been great. I’m not tech-savvy enough to understand codes, but I can easily navigate and function around the Omise dashboard; monitoring transactions, creating refunds etc.

Before launching the app, our service was through call center only and cash was the only payment method we accepted. But after launching the application and adding card payments, the number of people who choose to pay by card has steadily grown.