Challenge

Kay Woo, chief executive officer and founder of MVLLABS, had an innovative vision for the rideshare industry. He wanted to build a rideshare company that ensured fair compensation for drivers and eliminated their commission fees. He also wanted to provide riders with more options, including how they paid for services.

When Uber left the rideshare market in Singapore, Woo decided to move forward with his vision and launch TADA – which means “let’s ride” in Korean. To maximise growth in Singapore and simplify future expansion into other countries, TADA needed a payment processing solution that ensured seamless payment experiences for any number of riders in any region. Along with accepting credit card payments using local currencies, TADA wanted to easily support additional methods including digital wallets like Apple Pay.

Launching a rideshare company in Singapore came with unique challenges – and opportunities. Regional taxi and ridesharing services experienced high dispute rates and low authorisation rates. To ensure its riders enjoyed the best possible experiences, which would help it compete against established rideshare companies, TADA needed to maximise the acceptance rates of legitimate payments. The company also had to successfully block fraudulent payments so it could lower any financial risk that would slow its growth.

Solution

TADA evaluated payment processing vendors and decided to partner with Stripe because it delivers a comprehensive payment processing solution that TADA can easily scale and customise to meet its requirements.

“Stripe delivers the integration speed and ease we wanted,” said Kenneth Tay, head of product at TADA. “It also provides the services and relevant payment licences required to operate in our region and the global markets we’re looking at, including areas where services are highly regulated.”

In just two weeks, developers added Stripe Payments to TADA’s mobile app so that riders can pay for services with credit and debit cards processed in Singapore dollars (SGD). Developers also configured Payments so it facilitates pre-authorisation charges. That way, riders can see the estimated costs of their service before they get into a car – and TADA ensures that riders have adequate payment funds.

TADA enabled Stripe Radar to block fraudulent transactions and reduce disputes, including chargebacks. Radar uses machine learning (ML) that’s trained with data from billions of payments processed by Stripe and third-party banks to assign a risk-assessment score to transactions. If the transaction has a high fraud-risk score, Radar blocks it.

To maximise authorisation rates at the bank level, TADA adopted Stripe Adaptive Acceptance, which uses machine learning to optimise authorisation requests, retries, and routing combinations. Adaptive Acceptance automatically updates riders’ credit card information when it changes and also automatically checks if it can improve acceptance rates by using a network token versus a credit card number.

Results

TADA simplifies global growth with Stripe Payments

After its initial launch in Singapore in 2018, TADA was able to expand its operations to Cambodia and Vietnam in 2019 and Thailand in 2024. Over the next three months, the company will start operating in Hong Kong as well. Riders can use the card they store in their account profile across all the countries that TADA operates in and know that they’ll enjoy seamless, reliable services.

“With Stripe, we are confident that things are always up and running,” said Tay.

TADA lowers risk and maximises revenue with Radar and Adaptive Acceptance

By using Radar and Adaptive Acceptance, TADA blocks fraudulent transactions and helps ensure that legitimate payments are processed.

“Over the last 12 months, we have maintained a 0% dispute rate by using Radar,” said Tay. “By adding Adaptive Acceptance, we increased authorisation rates by 2.8%, so we now process 98% of all transactions.”

To facilitate future growth, TADA hopes to implement Stripe Elements to customise riders’ checkout experiences using pre-built UI building blocks. The no-code tools in Elements would enable TADA to expand its payment options to include digital wallets like Apple Pay, as well as a Thailand-based payment method called PromptPay that allows customers to make a payment by scanning a QR code with their bank app.

“As we look to expand in new regions, we know that Stripe will provide the tools we need to rapidly scale and adjust our payment services so we can provide riders with more choices and better experiences,” said Tay.