Johannesburg, 14 March 2024 – Bolt, the on-demand transport platform operating in 23 South African cities, continues to offer Small and midsize enterprises (SMEs) a service to manage and pay for corporate trips via a single, easy-to-use portal.
Bolt for Business also makes it easy for SMEs to remove the ‘own transport required’ condition for employment by allocating a monthly budget through the Bolt platform to individual employees. This means that all employees who travel for business enjoy the benefits of affordable and reliable personal transport without the often-prohibitive costs associated with vehicle ownership.
Bolt launched Bolt for Business after noticing the growing number of Bolt trips taken for business purposes during working hours, with riders commuting to work, rushing to client meetings or getting to the airport.
“In a country with unreliable public transport and high costs of car ownership, Bolt for Business offers a convenient and cost-efficient solution to business travel,” says Sandra Suzanne Buyole, PR Manager, Africa at Bolt. “It also provides an alternative transport option for the many young people entering the workplace who cannot yet afford their own vehicle, or who actively choose not to buy a car.
“In addition, Bolt for Business is the perfect solution for entrepreneurs and SMEs, where time is money and hours spent in traffic can be put to better use for making calls, reading and responding to emails, or doing research if someone else – like a driver on the Bolt platform – is driving.”
Bolt for Business gives companies the ability to offer defined employee groups and clients the option to use the Bolt service at the company’s expense. Account managers can also set and customise spending allowances and the number of trips employees can take.
The Bolt for Business travel management solution is available for desktop and mobile, and saves businesses time and money by storing all the information about their employees’ corporate Bolt trips on a single dashboard. Paying for trips is quick and easy: instead of reimbursing each individual employee after a complicated expense claims process, companies can pay Bolt once a month for all trips taken, via company credit card or bank transfer.
Additional functionalities such as adding restrictions to specific times and locations for taking trips, as well as a prepaid payment method, will be added to Bolt for Business later this year.