DoorDash Adds Max Streaming Service to DashPass Membership Program

DoorDash

DoorDash’s DashPass membership program now includes offers from Warner Bros. Discovery’s Max streaming service.

A DashPass Annual Plan membership in the United States now includes Max With Ads at no additional cost and an offer to upgrade to a Max Ad-Free subscription for a discounted rate of $10.99 per month, the companies said in a Tuesday (Aug. 13) press release.

“Since launching DashPass six years ago, our goal has always been to deliver increasing value and savings to members,” Prabir Adarkar, president and chief operating officer at DoorDash, said in the release. “Streaming and delivery go hand in hand, and we’re thrilled to launch a coveted benefit for DashPass Annual Plan members.”

This new benefit is the first one beyond the DoorDash platform to be made available to DashPass Annual Plan members, according to the release.

It joins the other benefits the local commerce platform offers to members, including exclusive deals, members-only benefits, and no delivery fees and reduced service fees on eligible orders from restaurants, grocery stores and retailers, the release said.

The new offer gives consumers another way to stretch their dollars and enables them to arrange a night in with films and shows, restaurant dishes and snacks, per the release.

“Max’s partnership with DoorDash provides an exciting, complementary pairing of services with a great value for consumers,” Pato Spagnoletto, global chief marketing officer, direct-to-consumer, at Warner Bros. Discovery, said in the release. “We are thrilled to roll out this offering and introduce a world of exclusive and iconic stories to DashPass members.”

Both aggregators’ sales and restaurants’ direct digital ordering channels are rising, DoorDash CEO Tony Xu said Aug. 1 during the company’s quarterly earnings call.

“If you look at digital, … that’s growing not just for us at DoorDash on our marketplace, it’s also growing for us in our first-party platform, as we power a lot of these restaurant and retailer websites for ordering, as well as their delivery channels,” Xu said.

The demand for greater affordability is driving subscriptions for DoorDash, and the company’s DashPass had an all-time high in terms of its subscriber base, Xu added.


Treasury Secretary: DOGE Has Found $50 Billion in Savings 

Treasury Department

The U.S. Treasury Secretary says a new government cost-cutting effort has found $50 billion in savings.

Speaking to Fox News Tuesday (Feb. 18) evening, Scott Bessent said the work by the “Department of Government Efficiency” (DOGE), a group created by executive order last month, could ultimately lead to “several percent of GDP that we are saving.”

The secretary added that the public doesn’t “have to be concerned about any of this,” in reference to attempts by the Elon Musk-connected team to access taxpayer data, leading Democratic lawmakers to raise concerns about privacy.

At the Internal Revenue Service, Bessent said, there’s one member of the DOGE team “looking at an outdated IT system, that’s all they’re doing.”

Bessent said two people at Treasury had “read only access” to the payments systems, meaning they don’t have the ability to make any changes.  “There are very strict guardrails around them,” he said.

The $50 billion figure is slightly lower than the $55 billion in savings DOGE claims to have found so far. However, a report from Bloomberg News Wednesday (Feb. 19) notes that while DOGE says it has saved $55 billion, its website accounts for just $16.6 billion.

That site also includes an error, the report added, mislabeling an $8 million contract as $8 billion, reducing the amount of the group’s itemized savings by nearly half.

DOGE’s efforts have helped bring about hundreds of thousands of government layoffs, some of which have been rescinded as departments realized they were missing crucial workers. 

For example, the mass firings led to the dismissal of a team in the U.S. Department of Agriculture working on the government’s response to the avian flu. The department has said it is now trying to reverse the firings.

In another incident last week, the National Nuclear Security Administration rescinded firings for employees responsible for monitoring the nation’s nuclear stockpile, only to discover it had no way of getting in touch with said employees.

The idea for DOGE was first floated last year, with President Donald Trump announcing that Musk would lead the project. However, the administration has since said that Musk was an advisor to the White House, and not in charge of the department.

In a recent interview with PYMNTS CEO Karen Webster, Amias Gerety, a Treasury official for the Obama administration, warned of the consequences if DOGE’s efforts to access payment systems created uncertainty.

“If there’s one phrase that dominates discussions about the Treasury’s role in the nation’s finances, it’s ‘full faith and credit,’” Gerety said.

“The full faith and credit of the U.S. government should not be impeached. It’s literally in the [Constitution]. If you’re a bank, if you’re an investor, if you’re a government contractor, if you’re a retiree receiving Social Security — you have to ask, will my payments go through? That uncertainty should be felt around the world.”