Swiggy Experimenting With UPI Plug-In

SUMMARY

Swiggy is beta testing the UPI plug-in, in partnership with Yes Bank and Juspay, to enhance user experience and reduce the reliance on third-party apps for payments

The service is currently being offered only to select members of the Swiggy team, and there is no timeline for its public launch

Earlier this year, Swiggy’s rival Zomato voluntarily surrendered the payment aggregator licence

IPO-bound foodtech major Swiggy is beta testing a UPI plug-in to enhance user experience and reduce the reliance on third-party apps for payments, sources told Inc42.

The development was first reported by Moneycontrol. The report said that the service is being tested in partnership with Yes Bank and Juspay to reduce payment failures.

The sources told Inc42 that the service is currently being offered only to select members of the Swiggy team. While a phased public launch is on the cards, there is no timeline for it.

“We have a huge percentage of orders coming in through UPI transactions. The offering is set to make transacting with the app more convenient for the public,” one of the sources said.

About eight months ago, “a technical down time” hit Swiggy. This payment gateway outage in November left many users unable to place orders.

The National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) launched the UPI plug-in in 2022. The service allows registered payment service providers (PSPs), banks, NBFCs, among others, to integrate with merchant apps or partner apps to provide an “inline” payment experience for end users, who will enter their UPI PINs in the partner apps and be linked to partner PSPs for the transaction.

The development comes a day after Swiggy launched a report, in partnership with Bain & Company, which said the country’s food delivery market will more than triple to INR 2.12 Lakh Cr by 2030.

Swiggy food marketplace’s CEO Rohit Kapoor told Inc42 that the company plans to continue with its experiments. In the past month, the foodtech major launched services like Swiggy Daily, Pockethero, and Reorder.

On the payments front, Swiggy’s rival Zomato has also been experimenting. However, after receiving an online payment aggregator licence from the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) in January, the Deepinder Goyal-led company voluntarily surrendered the licence in May.

The developments come at a time when Swiggy is gearing for its IPO. The startup filed its IPO papers via a confidential pre-filing route with the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) in April.

Its IPO is expected to include fresh issue of shares worth INR 3,750.1 Cr (about $449 Mn) and an offer-for-sale component worth INR 6,664 Cr (around $799 Mn), as per regulatory filings.

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