Next time you wish to order a pizza online, your unused Sodexo vouchers may come in handy.
French food services major Sodexo is partnering with payment gateway firm PayU in India to enable customers to use its vouchers for making payments online, a senior executive said on Thursday.
“We are integrating with PayU which has the largest number of food outlet merchants. It will happen in the next two weeks," said Suvodeep Das, vice president, marketing, Sodexo Benefits and Rewards Services in an interaction with Moneycontrol.
"If you will go to a QSR retailer's website, you will soon see Sodexo as an option, once you click on that, you can enter your card number, CVV and make the payment," he added.
Sodexo, a benefits and rewards firm for corporate employees currently claims to have about 45,000 merchants in India.
According to Das, of these, every merchant, who would have an online presence, will be able to accept payments through Sodexo.
Sodexo has been running its operations in India since the last 20 years and partners solely with corporates.
Sodexo’s digitisation efforts comes at a time when the Indian government too is focussing heavily on digitisation initiatives.
Last year, the government announced a demonetisation drive which benefited mobile wallet firms in a massive way. Companies such as Paytm and Mobikwik report 4x-5x growth in transaction numbers on a year on year basis.
(In pic: Suvodeep Das of Sodexo BRS India)
Talking about any potential threat from the wallet players, Das said, “Unlike wallets, the Sodexo consumers get money from their companies every month in the form of vouchers. We don't have to give cash backs to get money into the wallets.”
He however added that the company is open to allow customers to reload their Sodexo cards by themselves much like how the wallets function, if they see enough consumer feedback.
Currently these are pre-paid plastic cards that are loaded periodically by the respective companies.
“At this point our focus is on migration. In future may be, we haven't decided it yet. Is it possible? Of course it is,” Das said.
“Once we move all our clients to the card, we will start identifying needs like these. If we see significant number of our consumers stating a need like that then of course we can do this,” he added.
Sodexo has also been partnering with a bunch of start-ups including Bangalore-based Goodbox and UrDoorStep.com.
It however has no immediate plans to make a strategic investment in start-ups. “In India we are just looking at partnerships for the time being."
The company plans to migrate all its clients to cards by December 31.
According to the company, 3 million customers transact through Sodexo on a daily basis.
priyanka.sahay@nw18.com
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