Zomato Payments Gets RBI’s Approval To Operate As Online Payment Aggregator

Online food delivery platform Zomato’s wholly-owned subsidiary Zomato Payments Private Limited (ZPPL) has received a certificate of authorisation from the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) to operate as an ‘Online Payment Aggregator’, the company announced on Thursday. This authorisation by RBI has come into effect from January 24.

“Pursuant to our earlier disclosure dated August 4, 2021 regarding the incorporation of Zomato Payments Private Limited (“ZPPL”), a wholly owned subsidiary of Zomato Limited (“the Company”) to carry out the business, inter alia, as payment aggregator and issuer of pre-paid payment instruments, we wish to inform that ZPPL has been granted certificate of authorisation dated January 24, 2024, from the Reserve Bank of India (“RBI”) to operate as an ‘Online Payment Aggregator’ in India with effect from January 24, 2024, as per the guidelines issued by the RBI,” Zomato said in an exchange filing.

With this new development, Zomato Payments has expanded its reach beyond food delivery and restaurant discovery into the world of digital payments. In addition to this recent development, Zomato partnered with ICICI last year to introduce its own unified payments interface (UPI), Zomato UPI. This feature was provided to selected users and did not involve a KYC process. If a user operates through Zomato UPI, there is no need to navigate to other payment apps, such as Paytm, PhonePe and Google Pay, while placing orders.

“Daily payouts” is a new service that Zomato launched earlier this month to help its partner restaurants that are just starting out. The feature will be available for only those restaurant partners who currently receive 100 or fewer orders a month, according to the company’s statement.

“Our discussions with various restaurant partners highlighted the financial challenges smaller eateries face using the traditional weekly payout system. This feature is designed to address this critical need for more frequent access to earnings,” Zomato said in a blog post.