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The Murray Hunter Substack has noted a lengthy tweet about how SE Asian ride sharing superapp Grab Holdings Limited (NASDAQ: GRAB) has followed the old ‘Air Asia’ playbook with its online booking scam of inserting a “compulsory” 30 sen (roughly several US cents) insurance charge on rides that is hard to opt out of for future rides (if a customer even notices it on their receipt). That may sound like a small charge, but consider this:

Wee looked at the potential extra revenue that might come Grab’s way in this extra add on. If we accept the figure of 2.5 mil rides per day as stated by Grab in its website, the additional daily income is RM750,000 [US$167,821.5] - the monthly extra income is RM22.5 mil!! [US$5,034,645]

This is a similar business model used by Air Asia in the past. They got fined for this in Australia some years ago. Grab now sees this strategy as a blue ocean until its closed off.

I rarely need to use taxis or ridesharing apps - so I can’t comment - other than to say that Malaysians have been telling me for years that Grab is “expensive” in Malaysia and to use other (I guess local…) ride sharing app alternatives.

In the “alternative” financial news and blogging space though, I know that I have heard/read either (more likely…) Catherine Austin Fitts (Solari Report) or Yves Smith (naked capitalism) complain specifically about American companies becoming increasingly “scammy,” or rather having their entire business or profit models built on or around committing outright fraud (with the regulators and politicians increasingly letting them get away with it…)

However… Back in the late 1990s, I remember a relative at a holiday dinner complaining about a mysterious small charge (like $13) appearing on their credit card statement (which they actually look at…). After asking the wife about it, he called the card company who quickly removed it with other relatives commenting, “imagine if you charged everyone a similar amount, how many would notice and how much money would the card company etc make?…”

[It will be interesting to see whether Malaysia or other SE Asian governments look into and put a stop to this Grab charge…].