【artistic eroticism】

There's finally a way to split the check for rides and artistic eroticismfood in the Uber app — all without paying that extra fee.

On Thursday, the San Francisco-based ride-sharing company announced a partnership with Venmo that integrates the popular payment system into the Uber app. This arrangement sidesteps the current in-app split-ride fee.

"With so many of our riders and eaters already turning to Venmo as a way to pay a friend back for that last ride or meal, we're proud to have built a seamless, easy-to-use connection between our apps," Marco Mahrus, Uber's head of payment partnerships, said in a statement.

The update basically takes away the step of opening another app. Think of the Uber app as a website and the option to use Venmo in it as an add-on application, like sharing an article on social media without having to leave the page.

More than six million Venmo payments within the last year mentioned Uber already, so the new partnership to let riders (and eaters) split expenses simply streamlines fare splitting for them. Venmo is even giving Uber and Uber Eats their own custom icons in the app — the first companies to receive branded emoji in the payment platform.

Uber's new collaboration even gives people the option to pay for the company's ride-sharing and food delivery services with their Venmo balances.

This move is probably targeted at users born after the 1980s, since they comprise a bulk of both companies' customers — the added convenience also potentially aims to combat Uber's loss of market dominance.

The update will roll out to all U.S. Uber users in the coming weeks. The old method of splitting fares is still an option for those without Venmo, though the $0.25 charge will unfortunately still apply.

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