More than 1000 Bolt drivers will benefit from its asset finance program that the company intends to roll out before the second quarter of this year.

Bolt country manager Linda Ndung’u says the program will see drivers benefit from electric and diesel-powered vehicles necessitated by the realization that drivers' income has been reduced, especially for those who have to remit their earnings to a third party.

Ndung’u says the deal will see drivers financed to acquire two-wheelers and vehicles with 1000cc capacity and below to have a better return on investment than vehicles with a larger engine capacity.

“It’s a very exciting development for us as bolt because we’ve realised when we look at our driver partners a big portion of them actually do not own their vehicles and because they do not own their vehicles their cost becomes much higher because they have to remit a proportion of what they are earning to somebody else which means there is less in their pocket."

“We have a significant population base that we can support with this product, and we are able to obtain fairer prices for our driver partners we get better value for the money that will go out there but the money will be covered by bolt because it’s one of our ways of saying that we care about our drivers we want them to be safe we want to help them in the unfortunate eventuality of an accident or someone passes," she added.

Drivers, on their part, called for verification of the customers as well, citing cases of misuse of the hailing application and driver endangerment.