Glossary

Plain-language definitions of the terms you'll see across Ryde — rides, delivery, services, and merchant tools.

Account verification: The process of confirming your identity and documents before you can use certain features, like driving, delivering, or running a store on Ryde.
Background check (vetting): A review of a driver's, courier's, provider's, or merchant's documents and history before their account is approved to go live.
Booking: A reserved time slot for a service package with a provider, similar to booking a ride.
BYO courier: A real, fully vetted Ryde courier that a store invites to deliver exclusively for them. Accepting the invite creates a delivery relationship, not a shortcut around courier vetting.
Cancellation fee: A charge that may apply when a ride or booking is cancelled after certain conditions are met.
Catalog: The list of items a restaurant or shop has for sale in the app, each with its own price and stock.
Courier: The person who picks up and delivers a food, grocery, or shopping order.
Courier pool: Ryde's general group of couriers available for dispatch to any store, as opposed to a store's own BYO couriers.
Delivery fee: The charge added to an order to cover getting it from the store to you.
Dispatch: The system that matches a ride or delivery request with an available driver or courier.
Driver: The person who accepts and completes ride requests. Driver and courier are separate roles, though the same person can hold both.
DOP: The Dominican peso, the currency used for prices, payouts, and your wallet in the Dominican Republic.
ETA: Estimated time of arrival — how long until your driver, courier, or order is expected to reach you.
Guest mode: The lighter version of the app and the Ryde AI Assistant available to someone browsing without an account. It can't see or touch anyone's account.
Home services: Bookable services performed at the customer's home or another location, like cleaning, plumbing, or handyman work.
Inventory: The stock count a merchant tracks for the items in their catalog.
Merchant: A business account on Ryde — a restaurant, shop, or service provider — that sells through the app.
Merchant portal: The dashboard where a merchant manages their catalog or service packages, orders or bookings, staff, and earnings.
Onboarding: The setup process for a new driver, courier, provider, or merchant — documents, verification, and signing the operating agreement — before their account goes live.
Operating agreement: The legal agreement every driver, courier, provider, and merchant signs electronically with Ryde before going live. It's a permanent record you can view any time.
Operator lock: A security lock on a shared merchant device that requires a PIN or login before anyone can use it to sell, refund, or view takings.
Order: A food, grocery, or shopping purchase placed through the app for delivery or pickup.
Safety cap (driver hours): A limit on how long a driver can stay continuously online — after roughly 17 hours, the app takes them offline until they rest. A safety feature, not a penalty.
Payout: The transfer of a driver's, courier's, or merchant's earnings out of the platform to their own bank or account.
POS (point of sale): The in-app tool a merchant uses to ring up sales, take payment, and print receipts at their store.
Promo code: A code that applies a discount to a ride or order when entered at checkout.
Provider fee: The fee added on top of a payment to cover the cost of processing it.
Rating: The score riders, drivers, couriers, and merchants give each other after a trip, delivery, or order.
Ride: A single trip booked and completed through Ryde, from pickup to drop-off.
Ride tiers (categories): The different vehicle options you can choose from when booking a ride, each with its own price and capacity.
Ryde AI Assistant: The in-app chat assistant that can look up real information from your account and take some actions when you ask, always confirming with you first.
Ryde Eats: Ryde's food and grocery delivery service.
Ryde One: Ryde's paid membership.
Ryde wallet: The in-app balance you can use to pay for rides, orders, and bookings.
Service package: A defined, fixed-price service a provider offers — like a cleaning job or a repair — that a customer books rather than adding to a cart.
Service provider: A merchant account set up to sell bookable service packages, like cleaning, plumbing, or salon services, instead of physical items.
Staff PIN: A short code an employee enters on a merchant's device to use it, without needing their own Ryde account.
Surge (demand) pricing: A temporary price increase on rides when demand is higher than the number of available drivers nearby.
Till / shift: The record of cash and card sales a merchant tracks from when they open for business until they close out.
Top-up: Adding money to your Ryde wallet.
Trip: Another word for a completed ride.
Grow tab: The section of the merchant portal that shows how a store is performing and suggests concrete next steps based on real order data.
Recipe: The mapping between a menu item and the ingredients it consumes, so a sale can automatically deplete the right stock.
Till purchase: Recording a supply purchase with a photographed invoice and goods check, which logs the spend and restocks inventory together.