Lyft launched teen accounts on Monday, a product that enables minors as younger as 13 to hail a journey with out an grownup in 200 U.S. cities, together with Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, and New York.
The official launch comes two weeks after Lyft CEO David Risher announced on X plans to open the ride-hailing service to youngsters.
Like its rival Uber, which additionally affords teen accounts, the brand new Lyft service comes with quite a lot of guardrails. Solely a father or mother or guardian can create a teen account, in keeping with Lyft. Drivers who’re matched with these underage passengers should meet further standards and move yearly background checks. Teenagers can even carry company alongside for the journey, so long as the father or mother has given permission, in keeping with Lyft.
Lyft has additionally baked in options like PIN verification, audio recording, and real-time monitoring to permit dad and mom to see the place their teen is throughout their journey. Mother and father who need to join their teen can go to the app, choose their profile on the backside proper of the display screen, then faucet “Lyft Teen.” From right here, dad and mom can enter the teenager’s contact information and add a shared fee technique to cowl teen rides. As soon as confirmed, the teenager will obtain a textual content message with a novel sign-up hyperlink.
Lyft is enjoying catch-up with Uber and even Waymo, which affords teen accounts in its robotaxi service space in Phoenix. Uber examined teen accounts as early as 2017 however didn’t roll out a industrial product till spring 2024 in additional than a dozen cities within the U.S. and Canada. Uber has since added quite a few different U.S. markets, in addition to dozens of different nations. Final 12 months, Uber began testing out teen accounts in a number of cities in India, as properly.
Lyft’s new teen account is one in all quite a few new merchandise and expansions that Risher has launched on the firm since he took the CEO spot. Lyft has made a handful of autonomous automobile partnerships, together with with Might Mobility, Austrian producer Benteler, and Holon, Tensor Auto, and autonomy supplier Mobileye.
The corporate has additionally pushed into Europe with its $197 million acquisition of German multi-mobility app Freenow from BMW and Mercedes-Benz Mobility. The acquisition opened up the European market to Lyft for the primary time.
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June 23, 2026
