Zomato cashless payment service shuts down operation in Dubai

Zomato, the white label restaurant service from India, will pull back its cashless payment service in Dubai. For the meantime, the company will work out on the new system called Base and Book. It will address the conflict the cashless service had encountered.  

Following the recently announced job cuts, Zomato confirmed it will shut down the company's cashless payment system in the Middle East, Tech Crunch reported.

This February, Zomato had launched a seamless way for the customers to pay their food with their credit cards.

Though after testing its deployment initially in Dubai, the company decided it will roll back its service and will discontinue its worldwide market.

Deepinder Goyal, CEO of Zomato, explained in the company's blog, the customers were early adopters of the cashless system. "We had to lure the user to think differently - this was the most difficult part. In our cashless product, we needed a user to think about the payment at a restaurant before the start of the meal, whereas they are accustomed to thinking about the payment only at the end of the meal."

A news published by Tech Times stated that the cost of continuous training with the restaurant staffs was too expensive over the results. The iPads Zomato had provided to each restaurant for processing the payment also added to the company's expenses.

On the other hand, Goyal said they will bring back the cashless payment to Dubai once they have developed their system. The new task is to make sure the table reservation could accommodate as many restaurants as possible.

The company plans Base and Book, a point-of-sale and table management systems. With the Base and Book, the company will not have to install hardware to restaurants anymore. It will also allow a full cashless experience for restaurants and users.

Evidently, it was tough to run the new service and the market is not yet ready to adapt the technology. Zomato said the cashless system will be fully demolished in seven days.