Zomato's Payment Arm Voluntarily Withdraws NBFC Application

Zomato Financial Services Ltd. on Tuesday decided to voluntarily withdraw the application for getting registered as a non-banking financial company.

The board is withdrawing the application submitted to the Reserve Bank of India for undertaking the business of NBFC as the company doesn't wish to pursue the lending or credit business anymore, it said in an exchange filing on Tuesday.

The company expects no material impact on the revenue or operations on account of voluntary surrender and withdrawal.

This comes over a month after Zomato Payment Pvt. announced that it will voluntarily surrender the licence it obtained from the RBI to operate as an online payment aggregator. The decision by the payment unit of the foodtech was made due to lack of competitive advantage.

"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.

Shares of Zomato closed 2.23% higher at Rs 208.52 apiece on Tuesday, as compared to a 0.07% decline in the NSE Nifty 50.