Following the footsteps of several consumer internet companies, food delivery startup Swiggy has also forayed into payments. The Bengaluru-headquartered firm has launched its own wallet – Swiggy Money. According to the latest notification in its FAQ column, the wallet will only be used to credit amounts for the cancelled orders at the moment.
Going forward, Swiggy Money will function as a usual digital wallet to store money and pay for transactions on the platform. The wallet of the Meituan-backed firm is powered by ICICI bank and is a fully RBI compliant Prepaid Payment Instrument (PPI).
This essentially means that users have to complete a minimum KYC (know your customer) by entering government-issued identification information to use the service. It’s worth noting that Swiggy Money went live just a day after RBI introduced a semi-closed prepaid payment instrument for small-ticket retail payment up to Rs 10,000.
Three months ago, Entrackr had exclusively reported Swiggy’s plan to launch a wallet. Swiggy Money will also add UPI, credit card, debit card and net banking options to load money.
With minimum KYC, a Swiggy Money user can transact up to Rs 10,000 while a full KYC allows the user to load up to Rs 1,00,000 at any given time. The wallet is currently available on food orders but will soon be opened up for Swiggy Pop, Swiggy Stores and Swiggy Go.
Besides wallet, Swiggy is also expected to foray into the UPI-based payments business that may include peer-to-peer fund transfer. Starting Swiggy Money only to credit cash for cancelled or disputed orders looks like a smart move by the company. Users are bound to use its wallet to redeem the cash that is leftover on their cancelled orders.
Since Swiggy does about 50 million orders a month, having an in-house wallet will certainly help the firm in driving scale and engagement. The firm also felt the urge to have an in-house payments product, especially after launching four different products – Supr, Swiggy Stores, Swiggy Daily and Swiggy Go this year.
