Zomato will bring cashless payments to its app in India later this year

Zomato just added a cashless payment system to its app in Dubai, which will let diners pay their bills at participating restaurants directly through the Zomato app on their phones instead of using cash or handing over their credit cards. Users in India can expect this feature to arrive later this year.

Zomato just added a cashless payment system to its app in Dubai, which will let diners pay their bills at participating restaurants directly through the Zomato app on their phones instead of using cash or handing over their credit cards. Users in India can expect this feature to arrive later this year.

'We definitely plan to introduce it in India over the course of the year. Once we see how this does in Dubai however, we'll get a better idea as to what we can expect when we roll it out on home turf,' Zomato's co-founder and COO, Pankaj Chaddah, told the Hindustan Times.

It will be intersting to see the response a cashless payment system gets in India. According to Zomato's press release, Dubai was perfect to introduce this feature because credit card usage there is extremely strong. This isn't the case in India, where credit card transactions have a relatively tiny market share compared to cash payments. Moreover, India's stringent RBI guidelines about online payments might throw some regulatory hurdles in Zomato's way.

Zomato's cashless payment system is similar to a feature that Apple introduced last year with Apple Pay, which allows customers to pay for their meals at participating restaurants directly through their phones using the credit card linked to their iTunes accounts. Apple Pay, however, is available only in the United States for now.