Zomato, the global restaurant search and discovery app that provides in-depth information for over 1.4 million restaurants globally, has announced that it will soon be launching its cashless payment services in New Zealand, creating 100 jobs in the process. This means consumers will not even need to take their credit or Eftpos cards to restaurants.
Founded by Deepinder Goyal and Pankaj Chaddah in 2008, Zomato has raised a total of US$163.5 million in funding, and is currently valued at US$1 billion.
Zomato’s global headquarters are in India but it has a presence in 22 countries and helps over 90 million visitors every month discover great places to eat. Building on its powerful search and discovery product, Zomato will soon enable diners in New Zealand to pay at restaurants through its app.
Zomato’s payment system will store users’ credits card on its device, enabling the restaurant to bill them via the app instead of the usual payment process. The Zomato app will effectively permit a diner to pay their bill and depart without the hassle of waiting on the waiter or the cashier to swipe a bank card in an Eftpos machine to complete the transaction.
“Based on a lot of user and merchant feedback, we realised there was a need for a seamless product experience in NZ. Our focus has always been on making dining experiences more convenient, and we are certain that the in-app cashless payments feature is going to change the way people dine in NZ,” said Kirsty Cardy, country manager for Zomato NZ. “We are expanding rapidly in the market and are looking to hire over 100 people across verticals in the next two months.”
Zomato currently has over 700,000 unique users in NZ viewing over five million pages a month and its team members number over 40.
Cardy added, “Settling your bill is a 10 to 15 minute process today, and Zomato seeks to cut that time down to just a few seconds. These new services are set to position Zomato as the key platform for restaurants and consumers in NZ.”
Pankaj Chaddah, cofounder of Zomato, said, “In the long term we want to be the singular communication platform for restaurants and customers. We want people everywhere to have easy access to all kinds of restaurant information at their fingertips so they can make informed dining decisions. There is a lot of ground to cover in bridging the communication gap between consumers and restaurants. I think with the introduction of cashless payments, online ordering, table reservations, and our built-for-business POS product, we will be able to bridge that gap to a large extent.”
Over the past few months Zomato has added a number of services to its platform, extending its services beyond just restaurant search and discovery. The company acquired restaurant reservation platform NexTable in April this year and will soon launch its table reservations app Zomato Book. In February, Zomato Cashless was introduced in Dubai and will soon extend to NZ.
The need for the new staff has been generated by the introduction of the cashless payments technology into NZ.
The 100 new staff positions span three senior management roles, entry level to sales management positions, support staff, processing staff, and a content team.
The company is holding a recruitment day at its offices on July 11.
