Zomato Temporarily Halts New Users on Its UPI Platform to Incorporate Feedback

Food delivery platform Zomato on Thursday said it has temporarily paused the onboarding of new users on the Unified Payments Interface it rolled out in May to incorporate feedback. 

The company said it will start enrolling new users on the app by the end of the month.

In May this year, the Gurugram-based firm launched Unified Payments Interface (UPI) services for some users in the country in partnership with ICICI Bank.

"The UPI offering has been temporarily paused for new user onboarding, only to incorporate feedback received on the onboarding flow. We will start enrolling new users by the end of the month," a Zomato spokesperson said.

UPI is a real-time payment system developed by the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI).

The service facilitates transfer of money directly from the user's phones using a UPI PIN on supporting apps. Some of the top players offering UPI service in the country are Google Pay, Paytm and PhonePe. 

Zomato launched its own Zomato UPI service in partnership with ICICI Bank, all ready to take on Google Pay and PhonePe, in May this year. The aim was to make online payments more seamless with Zomato UPI by giving users an option of using the facility without doing KYC.

To use the Zomato UPI, users need to create their UPI ID on the Zomato app. "UPI Facility offers an instant, 24X7, interbank electronic fund transfer or fund collection service to the Users of UPI member banks. ICICI Bank will provide a mobile application to the Users which will use the NPCI UPI libraries facilitating payments," said Zomato in a release at the time.