Estate planning as a Instacart Shopper account holder

Instacart Shopper is the earner side of Instacart: an independent contractor who shops for and delivers grocery orders. Shoppers earn per batch — batch pay plus promotions plus 100% of customer tips — and are paid by weekly direct deposit (Wednesday to Friday for the prior week) with an Instant Cashout option that releases earnings to a bank account or debit card for a fee. The estate-relevant asset is the unpaid or owed earnings sitting in the account for completed batches before payout. This is the shopper account, not the consumer Instacart+ subscription, which is handled separately.

When a Instacart Shopper account holder dies, their earnings may be transferred to a designated person at Maplebear Inc. (dba Instacart)'s sole discretion. A transfer is not guaranteed, and satisfactory documentation is required before processing any request.

What happens at death

Instacart does not publish a dedicated deceased-shopper or estate-succession process for a shopper account. The Instacart Shopper Application Terms and Conditions state that the shopper may not rent, lease, sell, transfer, redistribute, or sublicense the Shopper App, and that the shopper has no right to assign or otherwise transfer the agreement, or any rights or obligations under it, to any third party without Instacart's prior written consent, given or withheld in its sole discretion. There is no documented beneficiary designation and no self-service account transfer. The practical estate asset is the unpaid or owed earnings — money Instacart owes the shopper for completed batches (batch pay, promotions, and tips) that has not yet been paid out by the weekly direct deposit or taken through Instant Cashout. Because earnings owed are money, the estate may seek to recover them by contacting Instacart Shopper Support with proof of death and proof of authority to act for the estate; Instacart reviews these individually rather than through a published procedure, so the policy is classified as case-by-case. The shopper account itself is not transferable to an heir without Instacart's written consent, so an estate generally recovers any owed balance rather than continuing the account.