Zomato Payments gets RBI's nod to operate as online payment aggregator

Zomato Payments, a wholly owned subsidiary of Zomato Limited, has received the certificate of authorisation from the Reserve Bank of India to operate as an online payment aggregator. In an exchange filing, the food delivery platform said the central bank has allowed it to carry out the business as payment aggregator with effect from January 24, 2024.

"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 authorization 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," the filing said. 

Last year, Zomato had joined hands with ICICI Bank to launch its own unified payments interface (UPI) offering -- Zomato UPI. The feature was offered to select users and did not involve a KYC process. It eliminated the need for users to navigate to other payment apps, such as Google Pay, Paytm, and PhonePe, while placing orders on Zomato. 

The company said that the feature is a safe way to complete transactions and one can secure their account by adding a security PIN to it. 

“Zomato has a large set of customers that 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),” a company spokesperson said last year.

With this, Zomato, just like Tata Pay, Razorpay, Cashfree, among others, managed to secure the much-awaited payments licence.

Earlier this month, Tata Payments and Bengaluru-based identity verification startup DigiO secured the payment aggregator (PA) licence from the RBI. With the licence, it is expected that the salt-to-software services conglomerate will process payments for its ecommerce transactions. 

In December 2023, Razorpay and Cashfree got the final approval from the Reserve Bank of India to operate as payment aggregators after nearly a year-long embargo.

Razorpay, in a statement, said: “Having received the new PA licence, we now restart onboarding new customers and are committed to serving them with our industry-first payment solutions. We welcome this new development and are delighted to be one of the first Payment Gateways to have received the final PA licence from the RBI."

In its statement, Cashfree Payments said: “Securing the Payment Aggregator (PA) licence from the RBI is a pivotal moment for Cashfree Payments, affirming our focus on compliance and highlighting the significance of a well-regulated payments landscape. We are now onboarding new merchants on our payment gateway. We are very excited about this new phase of our journey, where we continue to drive exponential growth and retain our market leadership as the preferred aggregator in the payments space."

Shares of Zomato were trading at Rs 135.85, down by 0.29 per cent, at 3.15 PM. 

Zomato's stock opened at Rs 131.75 on Thursday and closed at Rs 130.05 on Wednesday. The 52-week high for the stock is Rs 141.55, while the 52-week low is Rs 44.35. Its market capitalisation stands at Rs 1,17,815.13 crore. 

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