Uber’s engineering teams in India pride themselves on building locally for the rest of the world. A prime example of that over the past few months has been the Uber Eats Engineering team based out of Hyderabad. The team has been remotely leading innovations in Japan and Belgium to ensure the integration of payment wallets into the Uber Eats app. 

The first wallet the team added as a payment option in Japan was leading digital wallet platform LINE Pay, which was soon followed by the integration of PayPay, now the largest wallet in Japan by volume of payments.

The Hyderabad-based Indian tech teams, comprising the Engineering and Product divisions, have also led a global-first for Uber Eats by integrating it into the PayPay app. The integration allows eaters in Japan to place orders through Uber Eats directly from the PayPay app, making it the first time Uber Eats has been positioned as a mini app within another app. 

The flexible and reusable Uber Eats architecture allowed the team to seamlessly integrate with PayPay. Uber’s identity software framework allows PayPay users to use the Uber Eats service, and the Uber checkout module provides a unified payment experience. The integrations are of particular significance, because Japan has traditionally been a cash-driven market. 

The Eats Engineering team in Hyderabad also gave eaters in Belgium the option of paying for their orders through Bancontact, the country’s leading payment method and the market leader for electronic payments. Along with offering eaters in Belgium an added payment option, the integration also expands our user base in the country, by making the platform available to eaters with debit cards. 

We’re excited to be able to offer eaters in Japan and Belgium the convenience of digital payments while ordering food, which also facilitates social distancing protocols in these challenging times.