Uber Sets Up Tech Base In India To Boost Fintech Play With Uber Money

The global cab-hailing company Uber has now announced the formation of the Uber Money team of more than 100 technology professionals in India.

The company announced that this Hyderabad Tech Centre-based team will be responsible for global financial products and technology innovations. Besides Hyderabad, the Uber Money team also has a presence at its San Francisco, Palo Alto, New York, and Amsterdam tech centres.

Further, Uber said that the Hyderabad-based team will play an essential role in enabling upcoming new global features and improvements, including real-time earnings; updated debit accounts, and debit cards for Uber drivers; along with Uber Wallet and refreshed Uber credit card for Uber riders.

With deep knowledge in front-end, full-stack, mobile, machine learning, and data engineering, the Uber Money team will focus on implementing new payment methods, enabling and building financial compliance tools, leveraging smart routing technologies for payment gateways, and applying Uber Artificial Intelligence models for intelligent risk decisions.

Naga Kasu, Engineering Director and Hyderabad Site Lead, Uber said, “Besides engineering, we are investing in growing and scaling data science, analytics, and product management organizations to transform Hyderabad into a full spectrum tech site for Uber.”

Set up in 2014, Uber’s Hyderabad Engineering Centre builds software products and platforms, focusing on providing a seamless experience to Uber’s global community. The company said that with Uber’s CEO Dara Khosrowshahi’s pledge to remain committed to India during his October 2019 visit, Uber aims to double down on long-term growth at its Hyderabad and Bengaluru tech centres.

In October 2019, Uber announced its entry into fintech services with Uber Money. As part of this product, Uber’s drivers will be the first to get the benefits. The company has introduced an instant-pay option, where drivers can review their earnings after each ride and can redeem it according to their needs. For this, the company is rolling out globally a debit card and account with Green Dot.

Later in the month, it was confirmed that the company is planning to launch Uber Money in India for the financial inclusion of the drivers within the next six to eight months. By launching a UPI-backed financial service, Uber will be in competition with other payment platforms like Flipkart’s Phone Pe, Google Pay and Paytm. Moreover, Uber’s cab-hailing rival Ola already runs its financial service called Ola Money since 2015 and claims to have seen extensive growth in the product.

Now the question remains: Will Uber be able to take on its competitors, or will Uber Money make it to the list of the company’s not-so-well businesses?