Some takeaway delivery couriers say they are being paid as little as £1.74 an hour, far below the national minimum wage.

A courier in Leeds self-employed through Jinn, an app that allows customers to have meals and groceries delivered to their homes from outlets such as McDonalds, KFC and Sainsbury’s, provided evidence to the Guardian that he had been paid just £125 for 72 hours’ work.

Another showed he had received £264 for 94 hours – the equivalent of £2.80 an hour. A third said he was paid an effective rate of £3.05 an hour. Take-home pay is often even lower because the couriers must cover their own motorbike expenses of about £30 a week. The national living wage for people aged 25 and over is currently £7.20 an hour.

In common with many workers in the UK’s fast-growing gig economy, the couriers are classed as self-employed, meaning the mandatory minimum wage does not apply to them. But they have complained after Jinn, which is based in east London, scrapped a minimum hourly rate of £8 an hour in January. They now work on a piecework basis, being paid per delivery rather than an hourly rate.

Jinn reportedly secured a $7.5m (£6m) investment last year, partly to expand its service to cities outside London. Jinn promises its customers: “We can get you anything you desire, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week … as long as it’s legal.”

Couriers wait on bicycles or mopeds for orders that come through on their phones and can range from collecting a full meal for 10 from a branch of Nando’s to picking up a couple of chocolate bars from Sainsbury’s for a customer who would rather not leave their sofa.

One Jinn courier Riz Ali, 33, said he had fallen into debt as a result of the fall in earnings. He had expected to earn £759.60 for two weeks’ work in Leeds, but when Jinn removed the minimum hourly payment he was paid just £264.

“I lost £495 – that’s my rent, which is about to fall due,” he said. “I am using my overdraft and will have to ask friends and family to help. It is absolutely terrible. You would get more on government benefits. It is not worth working.”

Another courier, speaking on condition of anonymity, said he had expected to earn almost £600 for the last two weeks but received only £125 for working more than 70 hours.



“The money lasts just three or four days when I need it for two weeks,” he said. “I am also having to pay for a pushbike which I bought [to do the job] and that costs me £100 a month. I am having to rely on this job because it is hard to find anything else. It is better than going on the dole, which I have never been on in my life.”

Asked about the complaints of low pay, Jinn’s co-founder and chief operating officer, Leon Herrera, said couriers were free to take or refuse work and were not exclusively contracted to Jinn.

“Jinn is a delivery marketplace that aggregates demand and supply for collection and delivery services,” he said. “Couriers on our platform are 100% free to log in at their own schedule, accept or reject proposed drops, and do all of this on a completely non-exclusive basis.”

He said Jinn shared with couriers “spaciotemporal data” about when and where there was demand “so that they can make informed decisions regarding log-in days, times and locations.”

Jinn is one of several “gig economy” companies to have been criticised by workers for low pay. A Guardian investigation into Hermes, whose 10,000 “lifestyle couriers” deliver parcels for retailers including Next and John Lewis, found workers earning less than £6 an hour. Minicab drivers on the Uber platform have repeatedly complained that their earnings fall below the minimum wage once Uber’s 20% cut and car expenses are deducted. Both companies argue that they operate a self-employed model that allows contractors flexibility and excludes them from minimum wage obligations.

Last month angry Jinn couriers in London surrounded Herrera outside the company’s head office. In a video of the incident posted online, about 20 couriers can be seen circling the Spanish entrepreneur, demanding: “We want our money now.” One said: “We stay out in the cold and work hard. You make so much money because of your drivers.”

The confrontation appeared to have been triggered by the removal of the guaranteed hourly rate.

Adeel Nazim, 30, who worked 95 hours for £291 in Leeds, told the Guardian: “It is not worth being out for the money they are paying. We are sat in the freezing cold, sometimes waiting for two or three hours for a job. If this is the way they are going to treat us, it is really not on.”