Indian food delivery service Swiggy is beta testing a new unified payments interface (UPI) plug-in within its app.  

The initiative is aimed at reducing the company's reliance on third-party payment providers and streamlining the payment process for users, as reported by MoneyControl.

Inc42 reports that the in-app payment service, developed in collaboration with Yes Bank and Juspay, is being trialled internally with Swiggy employees and if successful will then be introduced to all users in stages.  

The exact timeline for the rollout has not yet been disclosed. 

In November 2023 Swiggy experienced a significant disruption due to a period of “technical downtime” that affected its payment gateway. The outage prevented many customers from placing orders. 

“We have a huge percentage of orders coming in through UPI transactions. The offering is set to make transacting with the app more convenient for the public,” a Swiggy source stated.

The UPI plug-in, launched by the National Payments Corporation of India in 2022, enables payment service providers, banks and non-banking financial companies (NBFCs) to offer an integrated payment experience.  

Users can enter their UPI PINs directly in the merchant or partner apps, linking them to the transaction with the partner payment service providers. 

This development comes as Swiggy's competitor, Zomato, scales back its financial technology ventures, having relinquished its payment aggregator licence and withdrawn its application to become an NBFC.  

In 2023 Zomato had sought permission to offer a similar service as a third-party application provider, in partnership with ICICI Bank, for real-time payments. 

In April 2024, Swiggy launched its new smart links tool to increase restaurants’ online orders by converting digital engagement into sales.