[SSLy]

> It's so difficult to get around before you get some kind of digital payment setup.

FWIW your outside-of-India Uber account should Just Work™.

[OJFord]

That was my experience, GP said they were inadvertently banned though, that would be annoying and limiting anywhere, but potentially hard to sort while travelling (and cope in the meantime). Not least because these things insist on coupling themselves to phone numbers.

[jrumbut]

Oh it very much did not just work (this was a little over a year ago so maybe things have changed?). Neither did anyone else's in my group.

Eventually I tried adding an Indian friend's payment card and I got an email saying I had been banned for suspicious activity or something.

The email made it sound permanent and I never got notified of my unbanning but my Uber account now works in the US and Canada again.

[SSLy]

Well, I've spent a month in India just a year ago and my Uber experience was indeed very smooth. I've just used my Polish card, phone number, etc. with no attempt to swap those things to Indian ones.

[jrumbut]

Yeah this appears to be a US specific thing. No American stuff worked, people from countries that were not the US were fine.