Today, Grab held its second GrabX event in Jakarta, Indonesia, where it showcased a slew of new features that will be rolled out to the app’s millions of users throughout the year.
Grab CEO Anthony Tan today announced 13 new features for users, driver and delivery partners, and Grab clients to help them get the most out of the app.
Underneath all these new technologies is the Grab Intelligence Layer, an artificial intelligence infrastructure built using data from 20 billion driving and delivery points to make these processes faster and more efficient.
Group Ride is a ride-hailing feature that allows you to share your ride with other passengers who are going to the same destination as you. This feature uses Grab’s AI technology to notify drivers that they can pick up other passengers nearby who are going to the same destination as you, which can reduce your ride-hailing costs by up to 40 percent.
In fact, this feature can also be used to pick up three more passengers who are friends to take your group to your destination.
This feature has already been introduced in the markets of Malaysia, Indonesia, the Philippines, Singapore and Thailand. It will be launched in Vietnam in the third quarter of this year.
The Grab More feature allows users to order food from more than one nearby food location in a single order with no additional minimum payment, and will be adapted by Grab’s AI system to enable delivery partners to pick up these orders more efficiently.
This feature is said to have been tested and used in the markets of Malaysia, Indonesia, the Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam and will be introduced in other markets soon.
GrabMaps for Consumers is perhaps one of the biggest announcements made by Grab. GrabMaps is a mapping and GPS system built using the open source mapping technology OpenMaps, and has been used by Grab’s driver and delivery partners for the past few years.
GrabMaps will soon be available to regular users, and data such as traffic congestion, weather and more will be sourced from Grab’s own driver partners and food and goods deliveries, so that the data is always up-to-date.
GrabMaps can also be used to find electric vehicle charging locations and car parking spaces if they need to stop for a while. The built-in artificial intelligence system allows users to compare the amount of money they need to spend on their trip, whether you drive or use Grab’s ride-hailing service.
The activation of the GrabMaps feature for users will be announced later.
After introducing the BNPL service, Grab will soon introduce a money lending service through Cash Loan, which uses payment data on your Grab app to determine how much money you can borrow. Grab will announce details about this feature later.
Cash Loan has already been introduced in the Philippines market before, and will be offered in the Malaysian and Thai markets by the middle of this year.
Last year, we reported that Grab announced a partnership with AI services company Anthropic, and at GrabX, Grab announced its own AI digital assistant that will help you make big decisions like finding a place to eat or booking food for a large group.
Grab’s AI assistant will then use your Grab app usage history to provide you with the best recommendations, and it’s up to you whether you want to use those recommendations. It can also be used to quickly and easily order groceries.
The feature has already been introduced in Singapore, and will be available in Malaysia, the Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam by the end of this year.
If you’re a fan of traveling or travelling to Southeast Asia, Grab has also introduced new features to make your holiday experience easier.
Grab will soon be introducing a travel wallet feature that will house important documents like flight tickets, gate details, announcements of any time changes and also a reminder to always check if you have your passport with you. The feature can also tell you where your baggage carousel is when you land.
This feature will be introduced in the Malaysian, Indonesian, Singaporean, Thai, Vietnamese and Philippine markets in Q3 of this year.
GrabStays is a hotel booking feature that uses Nuitee, a hotel booking service powered by artificial intelligence technology to allow you to book hotel rooms at the last minute.
This feature will be introduced for the Singaporean market in May 2026, and will be available in Malaysia in Q3 of this year.
Our favorite feature is GrabPay For Travel, which is a QR code scanning function for local payments in participating countries. With the Grab app, you only need to link your debit or credit card details, and the Grab app can scan QR codes such as DuitNow in Malaysia or QRIS in Indonesia, and payments can be made directly using the user’s payment card without any further input.
This feature will be introduced for the Malaysian and Philippine markets in Q3 of this year, and in the Singaporean and Thai markets by the end of this year.
Discover by Grab is a food recommendation feature, and is very useful if it is your first time in a city or country. Grab will collect “reviews” written by Grab users who are residents of the area, and this can go some way to helping users decide what food to try for the first time.
This feature is already available in Indonesia, the Philippines, Singapore and Thailand, and will be introduced in the Malaysian market by the end of this year.
If you are a food business owner, Grab has also introduced a number of new technologies for them.
The first is Virtual Store Manager, a service that turns CCTV feeds into a new digital operational layer where it uses AI to help set opening hours, track cleanliness, update staff arrangements and will send messages to business owners if anything happens that needs their attention.
Virtual Store Manager is currently being tested in the Malaysian and Thai markets.
Cloud Printer is a food order printer and scanner technology developed by Grab. It will send users’ orders directly to the restaurant kitchen to speed up the food preparation process. The QR code of the finished food can then be scanned to notify delivery partners that it is ready to be delivered to the buyer.
The feature has already been introduced in Singapore and Indonesia, and will be rolled out to other Southeast Asian markets starting April 2026.
Tap to Pay allows restaurant owners to use their smartphones as a payment terminal that supports payments using debit cards, credit cards and even QR codes.
The feature has already been launched in the Philippines and Singapore, and will be offered in Malaysia, Indonesia and Thailand later this year, and in Vietnam in 2027.
For Grab’s driver partners, the Driver AI Assistant is an AI digital assistant that guides them on how to drive more efficiently and earn more money. Drivers can talk to it, ask for advice on Grab policies, or help with common tasks, such as sending messages to their passengers.
Most of these features are already being tested or used in select markets, but 2026 looks set to be the year when they will all be rolled out to as many markets as possible.
