Photo of Becky Landrock and Imane Aztout, Deliveroo, Basak Toprak, Citi and Cedric Lendais, Deliveroo.
By connecting to its global banking partner through an API, Deliveroo has been able to transform its payment processes. This has brought with it increased transparency and efficiency, whilst also improving the experience of working for Deliveroo for its employees.
Imane Aztout
Group Treasurer
London, UK
Deliveroo partners with the best restaurants in the business to bring customers the food they love, right to their door. The company began operations in the UK, where it now covers 125 towns and cities, working with more than 20,000 partner restaurants and engaging 30,000 riders. Deliveroo is growing rapidly and now has operations in 12 countries across Europe, Middle East and Asia.
in partnership with
The challenge
Deliveroo makes large numbers of relatively low-value payments to its restaurant partners and its riders for deliveries. Its collections from customers, via cards, were fully integrated into its systems using application programming interface (API) connectivity. However, for payments, it relied on manual file uploads to online banking portals or through host-to-host connectivity with its multiple banks.
Given the high volumes of payments that Deliveroo needs to make – tens of thousands of payments in a single day – payment upload for batch processing often had to take place on an hourly basis. Moreover, the process was time consuming, laborious, and required additional security considerations given the manual handling of payment files.
As part of a wider redesign on its internal systems, Deliveroo sought a solution that could be fully integrated into its internal system and which would provide a single point of connectivity and a consistent experience across multiple countries. It wanted to partner with a single bank that would be able to meet its needs across all 12 of its markets.
The solution
To achieve this, Deliveroo turned to its partner Citi and worked with the bank to pilot its CitiConnect® API solution. With APIs regarded as the future of connectivity, to replace batch payment processing, the solution offered Deliveroo a real-time, on-demand payment initiation, payment status and account balance inquiries.
Implementation utilised the SWIFT MyStandards solution, a standardised bank-neutral platform for sharing specifications and file testing powered by SWIFT. The use of MyStandards accelerated the testing process, compressing the implementation timeline and increasing efficiency: it was straightforward for Deliveroo to prepare XML payment messages for their API calls using the platform.
With the solution live, it has enabled Deliveroo to have a single global method of connectivity to a single global banking partner. This has allowed the company to fundamentally change the way that Deliveroo processes payments. This includes ensuring that Deliveroo can easily track all payments and make sure its riders are paid on time; reconciliation with specific deliveries is straightforward with complete straight through processing, and enquiries about payment status are responded to in real time.
Ultimately, Deliveroo plans to integrate the payments information provided by CitiConnect® API with the app used by its riders so that they can instantly see updated payment information.
Best practice and innovation
Deliveroo is devoted to meeting its customers’ needs for a wide range of restaurant food delivered to their door using advanced technology. Its business ethos of quality, on-demand service was previously at odds with its financial strategy, where payments required labour intensive and time-consuming upload for batch processing.
The CitiConnect® API solution aligns Deliveroo’s business and finance strategies, as well as bringing its use of API connectivity for card collections into line with its approach to payments. While the use of APIs in collections is becoming widespread, Deliveroo’s solution is one of the first in the market to use an API for payments on a large, international scale and for such a complete, integrated solution.
The swift and smooth implementation of the solution is a testament to the close relationship between Deliveroo and Citi and the implementation teams’ commitment to clear communication and attention to detail as well as the use of the SWIFT MyStandards platform.
Key benefits
- Single global method of connectivity.
- Efficiency gains.
- Cost savings.
- Ability to leverage instant payments.
- Improving the morale of the workforce.
← Back to winners list Next case study →
