Zomato launches its own UPI offering, Flipkart to follow soon

Gurugram-based foodtech giant Zomato has gone live as a third-party application provider for the Unified Payments Interface (UPI). The company has partnered with ICICI Bank for this service and will allow users to make merchant payments as well as peer-to-peer payments.
 
In a statement, Zomato confirmed the development and said, “Zomato has a large set of customers who frequently use UPI to make payments for their food orders. We are providing a facility (as technology partner to ICICI) for customers to create a UPI ID on Zomato app so that they can make payments seamlessly (without the need to switch apps),”
 
Economic Times was the first to report this. The report by ET highlighted that Bengaluru-based ecommerce giant Flipkart is also working on rolling out its own UPI offering. Sources said that this move is aimed at servicing consumers better through their own UPI offerings. 
 
This in line with National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) that has been making efforts to reduce dependency on PhonePe and Google Pay. Both these UPI payment apps have a combined market share of over 80 per cent. In a bid to break this hegemony, the payments regulatory body introduced a mandate to not hold more than 30 per cent market share on the UPI network in terms of payment volume. 
 
The deadline to adhere to the mandate has been extended to December 31, 2024.
 
“There is a longer-term incentive for consumer internet companies to have their own UPI offering instead of depending on other payment aggregators. For companies that see millions of transactions every year, having your own payment product is a way of hedging against any potential merchant commissions that may be imposed in the future,” sources told ET.
 
Some of the players that have already rolled out their own UPI offerings include Amazon, WhatsApp, Tata Neu, MakeMyTrip, among others.

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