Uber Sets Up Uber Money Team in India to Develop Financial Solutions for Riders, Drivers

Uber on Tuesday announced the formation of a team of more than 100 technology professionals who will work on Uber Money from its Hyderabad Tech Centre to build solutions including Uber Wallet and refreshed credit cards for Uber cab riders. Last year, Uber established the Uber Money team in the US with an aim to provide a list of financial solutions to both driver partners and riders. The team at the Hyderabad Tech Centre will work on global financial products and will play an essential role in bringing offerings such as real-time earnings and debit cards for Uber drivers, the company said in a statement.

The Uber Money team in India will work in a collaboration with global teams to bring new payment methods and financial compliance tools. Additionally, the San Francisco, California-based company noted in its statement that the team would utilise routing technologies for payments gateways and develop Uber Artificial Intelligence (AI) models for intelligent risk decisions.

Uber could over time give a tough fight to solutions such as Paytm and Google Pay through the financial solutions developed by the Uber Money team in India. However, there is no clarity on when we would see the payments-centric products debuting in the country.

In October last year, Uber originally formed the Uber Money team in the US to develop features such as realtime earnings and Uber Wallet in addition to Uber debit and credit cards to help support drivers. The team was also designed to work on the refreshed Uber credit card specifically for Uber riders. At the time of its introduction, the company suggested the expansion of its financial-focussed move to other countries.

The team at Uber's Hyderabad Tech Centre is the amongst the first global teams working on Uber Money -- apart from the ones located at San Francisco, Palo Alto, New York, and Amsterdam tech centres.

“The Uber Hyderabad Tech Centre has the best in class Fintech talent specialising in risk, payments, financial reporting and analytics platform engineering. Besides engineering, we are investing in growing and scaling data science, analytics, and product management organisations to transform Hyderabad into a full spectrum tech site for Uber,” said Naga Kasu, Engineering Director and Hyderabad Site Lead, Uber, in the statement.

Uber is facing hardships in generating revenues through its services. The company recently sold its food delivery business, called Uber Eats, to Zomato after globally losing $461 million (roughly Rs. 3,286 crores) in the fourth quarter of 2019. The primary, ride-hailing business of the company is also facing the heat from Ola that expanded to markets such as Australia and London after initially growing in India. In such scenarios, Uber Money would help Uber distinguish its presence against the competition and bring avenues to generate fresh revenues.