Zomato surrenders payment aggregator licence, writes down Rs 39 crore worth of investments

economictimes.indiatimes.com:

Zomato has surrendered its payment aggregator licence and its application for securing a mobile wallet licence, the company said in a stock exchange filing on Monday.

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While announcing its FY24 financials on May 13, the Gurugram-headquartered startup decided to surrender its PA licence held by its wholly-owned subsidiary Zomato Payments.

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It has written down Rs 39 crore which it had invested into Zomato Payments and accounted it as impairment losses. Zomato clarified that the other operations of its payments subsidiary will continue.

This decision comes within months of the food delivery company receiving the PA licence from the RBI on January 25.

“The payments landscape in India has evolved meaningfully over the past couple of years since the time we applied for these licenses. At Zomato, we do not see ourselves having a significant competitive advantage against the incumbents in the payments space and hence we don’t foresee a business in payments space as commercially viable for us, at this stage,” the company said in its exchange filings.

Zomato added that the real impact of foraying into the payments business was more apparent when it got to place the structures to commence this business.

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