Updates to the Customer Tipping Experience and Faster Access to Earnings

We’re always working to make sure we offer the best possible experience for shoppers. While shoppers’ earnings from tips have nearly doubled since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, we also know that making sure you have consistent access to earnings — including tips — is a crucial part of the shopper experience.

Today, we’re making a few changes to the platform to provide more clarity around tips, confidence in the expected tip amount you may receive from a customer, and faster and easier access to your earnings.

Requiring Customer Feedback

Less than 0.5% of all Instacart orders have tips removed after delivery. Despite this rare occurrence, we realize it’s disappointing for shoppers to see a tip reduction after the order is complete. Starting this week, we are requiring customers to leave feedback if they decide to remove the tip after delivery. In the coming weeks, we’ll be testing an option for shoppers to view this feedback, in an effort to help you better understand why a tip may have been removed. By collecting this feedback and sharing it directly with shoppers, we hope it can provide more clarity on why a tip was removed to help improve the customer service experience in the future.

Deactivating Customers Who Inappropriately Use the Platform

Instacart customers play an integral role to ensure we cultivate and preserve an environment of safety, respect, and integrity for everyone on the platform. While the number of customers who frequently remove their tip is very low, we feel it’s important to address those who inappropriately use the platform. We take the well-being of our shopper community very seriously, and it’s important to us to maintain the integrity of the Instacart platform for all members. For the benefit of all shoppers on the platform, we are now deactivating any customer who consistently and egregiously engages in this type of behavior.

Reducing the Tipping Window

It’s important to us to give customers the flexibility to change their tip amount after they receive their order to best reflect the quality of service they receive. In virtually every instance where a customer adjusts their tip after delivery, they increase it. For this reason, we feel it’s important to continue giving customers the opportunity to change their tip after delivery to ensure shoppers can receive an extra tip for exceptional service. However, we also want to enable shoppers to access earnings as quickly as possible, without needing to wait longer for a tip to be finalized.

Based on our team’s research, we’ve found that only 0.25% of orders have a tip adjusted after 24 hours. While we want to ensure customers have flexibility to increase tips, the data has indicated that one day post-delivery is sufficient time for them to adjust their tip. That’s why, starting this Monday, June 8, we will be shortening the tipping window from three days to 24 hours, to continue to allow customers to increase their tip if they choose, while limiting the amount of time that shoppers need to wait for a tip to be finalized.

Updating the Cashout Experience for Faster Access to Earnings

We launched Instant Cashout in early 2019, and in that time, over 400,000 shoppers have used the feature to instantly cash out their earnings more than 8 million times. Starting next week, we’re expanding Instant Cashout to give shoppers the ability to cash out their customer tips in addition to earnings from Instacart. With a reduced tipping window, you can cash out tips just 24 hours after you complete a delivery, making it even faster and easier to access your earnings.

We recognize that for many, it’s more important than ever to have immediate access to your earnings. To continue supporting shoppers during this time, we’ll be waiving all Instant Cashout fees for shoppers using Visa cards starting next week through the end of July. And, as of next week, Instant Cashout will also be rolling out in Canada, now making it available for all shoppers on the Instacart platform.

These changes were designed to help shoppers access your earnings — including tips — as efficiently as possible, and to ensure we’re always keeping the platform balanced and fair. As always, we’re grateful to the shopper community for your continued role in bringing customers the groceries and household essentials they need.

Instacart

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Instacart is the leading grocery technology company in North America, partnering with more than 1,400 national, regional, and local retail banners to deliver from more than 80,000 stores across more than 14,000 cities in North America. To read more Instacart posts, you can browse the company blog or search by keyword using the search bar at the top of the page.