Asked often. Answered straight.
How escrow protects your fare, what a cancellation costs, how long verification takes — the details people actually ask about, in plain words.
General
What Karwano is, where it runs, and what it costs.
Karwano is a verified carpooling platform. Drivers who already make a journey — a daily office commute, a weekend trip to Islamabad — post their empty seats, and passengers going the same way book them and share the cost.
Every member verifies their CNIC before their first ride. It is not a taxi service: drivers choose the routes, and the fare covers the cost of a journey that was happening anyway.
Daily carpooling runs in Karachi, Lahore, Islamabad, Rawalpindi and Faisalabad, plus intercity routes between them — Lahore–Islamabad is the busiest. If your city is not live yet, you can still create an account and verify; we open new cities based on where verified members sign up.
Creating an account, verifying your CNIC and searching rides are free. Passengers pay the per-seat fare the driver sets — typically a third or less of a ride-hailing fare on the same route. A Johar Town → Gulberg commute that costs around PKR 900 by ride-hailing runs about PKR 250 as a shared seat.
The price you see at booking is the price you pay. Nothing is added afterwards.
Not today. Carpooling means the driver was making the journey anyway, and you share its cost. On-demand rides are coming as Karwano Go, and food delivery as Karwano Eats — same account, same verified identity, when they launch.
Booking & payments
How escrow protects your fare, and what cancellations cost.
You top up your Karwano wallet before booking. When you book a seat, the fare moves into escrow — held by Karwano, not yet paid to the driver. It stays there for the whole ride and releases to the driver only after the ride completes.
Nobody rides hoping the other person pays up. The money is already settled — safely.
No — and that is deliberate. Escrow can only protect money it can see: if the ride does not happen, your fare returns straight to your wallet, and if it does, the driver is guaranteed payment. Cash outside the app has no protection, so asking for it is against the community guidelines. If a driver requests cash, report it in the app.
Cancel more than six hours before departure and the full fare returns to your wallet instantly. Inside six hours, 75% is refunded and 25% goes to the driver, who held your seat and may not fill it in time.
If the driver cancels — at any point — you always receive a full refund, and the app suggests alternative rides on the same route where they exist.
Yes, all of it. Mark the ride as a no-show in the app; because the ride never completed, the escrowed fare returns to your wallet in full. No-shows also count against the driver’s reliability record, and repeated ones end an account.
Drivers
Requirements, verification time, and what the seats are worth.
Three things: your CNIC, a valid driving licence, and your vehicle’s registration along with clear photos of the car. Everything is submitted in the app — no office visit. Your car does not need to be new; it needs to match the photos, be roadworthy, and have a working seatbelt for every seat you offer.
Most drivers are approved within 24–48 hours of submitting complete documents. Blurry CNIC photos and mismatched number plates are the two most common causes of delay, so check both before you submit. The app shows your status at each step, and you can post your first ride the moment you are approved.
Realistically: enough to cover most of your fuel. A driver commuting DHA → Johar Town in Lahore who fills 3 seats at PKR 250 each, twenty working days a month, recovers PKR 15,000 a month.
Fares release from escrow to your wallet after each ride, and you can withdraw to your bank account or mobile wallet anytime. Carpooling is cost-sharing, not a job — think of it as your commute paying for itself.
Safety
SOS, women-only rides, and what happens after a report.
Press and hold SOS during a ride and two things happen at once: your live location and trip details — driver, vehicle, plate, route — go to the trusted contacts you chose, and our response team is alerted. The SOS line is monitored 24/7, outside general support hours too. There is no menu and no typing; it is built for moments when you can do neither.
Women passengers can filter search results to women-only rides, or to rides with a female driver. Women drivers can mark any ride women-only, and the app enforces it — those seats simply cannot be booked from a male account, which is one of the reasons CNIC verification matters. Tracking, SOS and escrow apply to these rides exactly as they do everywhere else.
After every ride you rate the other person, and a report option sits alongside the rating — plus on every profile and every active ride. Safety reports go to the front of the queue: a person reviews them, both sides are heard, and outcomes run from a warning to suspension to permanent removal. For serious reports the account is suspended while we investigate.
Support answers in-app from 9am to 11pm PKT. SOS is monitored 24/7.
Still stuck?
Ask a person. In-app chat is the fastest way to reach us — 9am to 11pm PKT — or email us and we will reply within one working day.
The rest makes more sense in the app.
Download Karwano, verify your CNIC, and take your first shared ride this week. The road is better shared.