Analyze why Wallet usage is growing but revenue is flat

Problem Statement Description

Product context: Uber is a mobility and delivery platform; its products include rides, Uber Eats, grocery and retail delivery, freight, driver and courier tools, and marketplace pricing.

Uber’s Wallet product is showing higher usage among merchants, but the revenue associated with Wallet has remained flat. You are asked to investigate this as a root-cause analysis problem, focusing on how merchants use Wallet within Uber’s broader mobility, delivery, and logistics marketplace.

Assume Wallet usage could include actions such as adding funds, receiving payouts, checking balances, redeeming credits, paying fees, or using Wallet-linked incentives. Revenue may come from transaction fees, payment processing economics, float, merchant service fees, or incremental marketplace activity influenced by Wallet. Your task is to frame the anomaly clearly before jumping into causes.

The investigation should separate whether this is a true business issue, a measurement issue, a mix-shift issue, or a product behavior change. Consider merchant segments, geographies, payment methods, transaction types, and time periods, as well as how Wallet interacts with Uber’s marketplace liquidity, reliability, and unit economics.

The experience should consider:

- How to define “Wallet usage” versus “Wallet revenue,” including numerator, denominator, and time window

- Whether growth is coming from new merchants, existing merchants, low-value merchants, or specific regions

- Whether usage frequency, transaction value, take rate, fees, or balance behavior has changed

- Instrumentation checks for event tracking, revenue attribution, payout timing, refunds, credits, and promotions

- Segment cuts by merchant type, geography, tenure, order volume, payment method, and Wallet feature used

- Hypotheses involving merchant incentives, fee waivers, product changes, regulatory constraints, or competitive pressure

- Evidence needed to distinguish between healthy adoption, cannibalization, leakage, and reporting mismatch

- Short-term mitigation and longer-term prevention mechanisms if a real revenue problem is confirmed

Your goal is to describe a structured RCA approach that helps Uber determine why Wallet engagement is increasing without corresponding revenue growth, what evidence would validate or reject key hypotheses, and what the business should monitor before taking action.