You're not wrong about OP's confusion, but a quick note that uber recently reported quarterly revenue of ~3.1bn which means "tens of billions" annually is exaggerating a little.

Does uber count it's fees as revenue or does it count fees and the fares (which get passed back to the drivers) as revenue?

My opinionated take is that if uber wants to pretend that drivers are not employees and it's just a marketplace then they shouldn't be booking the fare as revenue, just their cut but I'm not an accountant and I don't make the rules.

> My opinionated take is that if uber wants to pretend that drivers are not employees and it's just a marketplace then they shouldn't be booking the fare as revenue, just their cut but I'm not an accountant and I don't make the rules.

Good point, but Uber literally takes the money through its app, so I don't suppose that would be possible.

Yea, classic case of low vs. high margin businesses. Travel is a great example. You would think sites like Expedia would make a healthy margin on airline tickets. Due to the way it's set up (booking systems, airlines, competition) the actual net per ticket is something like $5 for domestic flights. Last I checked Expedia specifically, most of their revenue was on hotels.

Contrast that with a high margin business like consulting services or a proprietary technology/product and there's a huge difference in net profit between the two at $10m annual revenue.

Revenue is King, margin is Queen.

Does PayPal count money paid through its app as revenue?

Good point. I believe it (and similarly Amazon marketplace sales) uses nominee accounts.

I don't use Uber so I don't know if the payments are always to the same 'Uber Ltd' or not, but you're right that would seem to be a good option.

No. Neither does a bank. That’s, for lack of a better term, escrow.

They only count their share, not the full fare (agent revenue recognition). I was referring to annual numbers.