Deepinder Goyal-led food tech start-up Zomato has gone live with its unified payments interface (UPI) service for some of its users. 

The Gurgaon-based start-up partnered with ICICI Bank for the service. It has claimed that its customers will be able to make peer-to-peer (P2P) as well as peer-to-merchant (P2M) payments. 

“Zomato has a large set of customers that frequently use UPI to make payments for their food orders. We are providing a facility (as a technology partner to ICICI) for customers to create a UPI ID on the Zomato app so that they can make payments seamlessly (without the need to switch apps). There are no plans to tie up with more banks in the near future,” a spokesperson, aware of the developments, told the Economic Times (ET). 

Like Zomato, Indian e-commerce giant Flipkart has also started working on its payments service. The development came after the company announced its separation from the Sameer Nigam-led fintech firm PhonePe.

"Flipkart has been working on the UPI offering and is part of the new bunch of companies like Zomato and others who would offer their own third-party payments service," a person, aware of the matter told ET. 

How Will The New Facility Work For The Customers?

To avail of the benefits, the users need to sign up to create a new UPI ID. After that, they will not be redirected to other UPI applications like PhonePe, Google Pay, Paytm and others to make payments. 

The company is hopeful that the new initiative will be helpful to customers to make payments and they will prefer it as a mode of payment than cash on deliveries (CODs).