In the battle against Uber, Didi’s linkup with Lyft goes online

A Lyft car with the distinctive pink moustache seen in San Francisco. Chinese travelers to the US can now grab a Lyft using the familiar Didi app. Photo credit: SPUR

It’s been quite a while now since ride-hailing apps Lyft, Didi Kuaidi, OlaC, and Grab partnered up with the intention of taking on Uber. But it was only today that the first real volley has been fired in that war, with the link between Didi and Lyft finally going online this week.

According to the companies, the beta of the app link-up will go up this week, allowing Chinese travelers to the US to hail and pay for Lyft rides using the Didi Kuaidi app on their phones. There’s also an in-app translation service to facilitate driver communication for Chinese passengers who aren’t confident in their English abilities. The reverse of that – Lyft users being able to use the Lyft app to book Didi rides in China – isn’t quite ready yet but a beta of that should be coming in a matter of weeks.

Didi has a pretty clear advantage in China over Uber, but Lyft lags behind in the US.

Ultimately, the plan is for all of the allied apps – Ola in India, Grab across Southeast Asia, Didi in mainland China, and Lyft in the US – to be linked like this so that users can stick with the app interface, currency, and payment systems they’re comfortable with even when traveling abroad. But this Didi-Lyft beta linkup marks the first time it’s actually been implemented.

The elephant in the room, of course, is Uber, which operates its business in the home countries of all four of the allied companies. Didi has a pretty clear advantage in China, but Lyft lags behind Uber in the US, and the battle isn’t over anywhere just yet. The theory behind the Didi-Lyft-Ola-Grab partnership is that local companies know their markets best and will thus be able to outmaneuver globally-stretched Uber.

But the American giant has shown no signs of backing down in any of these local markets just yet.