Delivery Hero & Antom: Shaping Tomorrow’s Digital Platform Payments

Delivery Hero is the world's leading global delivery platform processing over 10 million orders per day, across more than 70 countries worldwide including Europe, Asia, Latin America, the Middle East, and Africa. Baemin, Foodpanda, Foodora, Hunger Station, Talabat and Yemeksepeti are some of the brands under the Delivery Hero umbrella.

Delivery Hero and Ant have been partners since 2019. From acquiring new customers through A+ Rewards and enabling local payment methods for Foodpanda to payment optimisation and orchestration, our partnership has grown beyond payments and now focuses on creating more delightful experiences for Delivery Hero’s global customers.

“I think one of the biggest advantages with Ant and Antom has been that they understand the local markets and nuances quite well. A lot of intelligence is built into what we offer to our customers so that we build a great experience on top of the offerings that Antom provides to us”, Vaibhav Kanth, Product and Business Head, FinTech, Delivery Hero shared.

Diego Garcia, Deputy Director, Global Strategic Accounts, 2C2P, Antom, Ant International added, “We focused on a couple of key areas: one of them is A+ Rewards. So this is the way that we look at bringing new users to Foodpanda and to other strategic partners.”

Hear from Vaibahv and Diego on our partnership, in our conversation with Paul Tunstall, VP International of Merchant Advisory Group (MAG), and how we are helping to shape tomorrow’s digital platform payments.

The MAG is a non-profit trade association that represents global merchants. It helps drive positive change and innovation in the payments industry through collaboration, education, and advocacy – serving the interests of global merchants across all industries.

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Transcript

Paul:

Today, we're joined by Vaibhav Kanth, who is the Product and Business Head for FinTech, Delivery Hero, and also Diego Garcia, who is Deputy Director of Global Strategic Accounts for 2C2P, Antom and International.

Delivery Hero is the world's leading global delivery platform, processing over 10 million borders per day and they're across 70 different countries, including regions like Europe, Middle East, Africa, Asia and Latin America.

Many of us will be familiar with Foodpanda, Foodara and Hunger Station – just some of the brands under the Delivery Hero umbrella. So I'm really looking forward to today's conversation on how Delivery Hero and Antom are shaping tomorrow's digital payments.

Vaibhav:

We look at what's best for our customers' experience and then work backwards from there. And from that standpoint, the way we offer our customers easy payment methods is paramount. What bakes into this entire story is how are we able to offer this at scale. So, speed and reliability come second after that. And in terms of ensuring that when a customer is at the checkout, nothing can go wrong, every transaction should be smooth, seamless, and converting for an order.

This is where a lot of our expertise is mixed with the expertise of Antom. We often use their global scale and capabilities to sort of offer a seamless way for customers to check out. And in a lot of cases, they offer a lot of diverse payment methods as well. So, a lot of local nuances are already handled by Antom for us. This internally builds an entire portfolio of payment options for our customers that does pretty much what you were saying about the balancing between speed, reliability and experiences.

Diego:

We go back to 2019 when the two organisations, Ant and Foodpanda, or Delivery Hero, started looking at how to address the APAC market in the user payment space. So at that time, cards obviously had tokenisation for a long time. But Foodpanda was looking at how could we then bring tokenisation into alternative payment methods.

The aim of Foodpanda was to try to make payments accessible to all. And as we know, cards are not necessarily so widespread in some countries in APAC. So we look at enabling first GCash, an e-wallet in the Philippines, and making that tokenised payment so that when users wanted to check out again, and we know that Foodpanda users are very loyal and are sticky, so they tend to make multiple transactions in a month. So being able to have that token and being able to recurringly pay without having to jump an app and breaking that conversion with also risks of fraud, where potentially malicious links were embedded was key and it was really exciting to be able to see that business thrive and see it as a great support to the Foodpanda Philippine business and from there we've expanded to multiple other markets such as Malaysia, Thailand, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Hong Kong and more to come.

Vaibhav:

Our collaboration with Ant has really helped us navigate the payment maze in the diverse markets that we offer right now. I think one of the biggest advantages with Ant and Antom has been that they understand the local markets and nuances quite well.

A lot of intelligence is built into what we offer to our customers so that we build a great experience on top of the offerings that Antom provides to us. We lean on them a lot towards ensuring that when a payment happens, a lot of the intricacies behind the backgrounds of fraud checks or ensuring that the payment really goes through the bank and gets settled back to us all sort of delegated to Antom and that really helps us build through our expertise on what we do best and leveraging the best from Antom as well.

Diego:

Payment compliance has also been an interesting one that we've worked in together. So some countries have capital controls restrictions, for example, so capital has to remain in a market. So that if Antom doesn't have the capabilities of producing settlement rails, we engage a local partner seamlessly so that Foodpanda can still access a smooth payment service but receives the funds locally.

And that requires us to build unified settlement, for example, so that every day when the Foodpanda operations team wants to see a transaction history, they can see that in the Antom portal in the regular format with the regular fields and everything no matter who's behind helping us so I think that sort of orchestration and unified payment interface really saves a lot of payment operations OPEX for Foodpanda. I think that's one, so that kind of one portal, one standard.

The other one that Vaibahv was touching upon is fraud. So acting in the middle of e-wallets or alternative payment methods and the merchant, we also are capable to identify patterns where we see maybe multiple users doing a transaction at the same time or one user doing hundreds of transactions from different Foodpanda accounts using potentially the same e-wallet account.

So those solutions are value-add ways to not only make sure transactions happen smoothly but also about avoid fund loss for Foodpanda, in terms of having to potentially refund users of merchants that have been subject to fraudulent practices.

Vaibhav:

Another advantage that we have seen with the way we build, in a general sense, when it comes to building products for multiple markets, a lot of companies hinge upon ensuring that we are able to build in a more global manner. So we build it once and we scale it to all markets. Now in this particular story, every Southeast Asia market has a different wallet play to themselves.

Where we have always been feeling the advantage with Antom is, it's a one plug-and-play solution that we often leverage upon. That one SDK, or that one API, helps us build it in a manner where that same implementation can be reused multiple times. And that's a huge advantage to platforms like us where we don't have to reinvent the wheel every single time, which really builds upon the story of the partnership that's been going on solid for a long time now.

Vaibhav: 

AI has been pretty much deeply embedded into Delivery Hero for a long time now. We have been using AI for a lot of things we show on the home screen to our customers from their restaurant choices and food choices, a lot of the incentives, ways in which it has been distributed to customers is AI backed.  

And we're slowly starting to turn the tide towards how do we enhance our experience for payments as well using AI. A big lever that we have is data for our customers. So imagine a situation where you're trying to make a payment on the Foodpanda app and it unfortunately fails. Now those five seconds are super crucial for us because the customer is about to bounce off. And the way we use AI right now is we have built a payment recommendation system and a fallback system. So, in any of these unfortunate situations, what is your next best call to action that you can give to our customers helps us save that payment failure and order loss from happening. This is where AI has been used to understand the customer's preferred choices from a long time. What would probably help them get to that conversion faster, what are we seeing on the acquiring side as well, which of the banks or cards or payment methods are having a downtime. All of those are baked into an engine that is able to spit out and give what's the next best course of action for the customer. And that has helped us get a very good incremental value in terms of our order conversions that we see.

So a lot of this areas of payment experience is what we are pretty much trying to improve from a longer standpoint, scale it to more markets, as we move and integrate more payment methods, this process would eventually get even more simpler for our customers.

Diego:

So up till now, we focused on a couple of key areas. One of them is A+ Rewards. So this is the way that we look at bringing new users to Foodpanda and to other strategic partners. So last year, 2024, and I'm quoting one of Vaibhav’s colleague, Antom was the number one user referral partner for Foodpanda. So we brought the biggest number of new users from outside source through A+ Rewards. So A+ Rewards is the tiles in different top e-wallets in APAC. So GCash, Touch ‘n Go, Alipay Hong Kong, etc. will have this A+ Rewards mini app on their homepage where we bring exciting content, vouchers, promotions, new offerings to users.

Tens of millions of users are seeing this content and are relying more and more on A+ Rewards as a way to discover what's the best or most exciting deals out there for them. And so Foodpanda has been a crucial partner in the A plus rewards initiative. We've been working together in multiple markets in creating offerings that we think would be exciting to users in this region, be it on discovering new features of Foodpanda or learning about the subscription, PandaPro model, etc. And the interesting part of this that we look at targeting that to users that perhaps have never transacted on Foodpanda, let's say on GCash or whichever e-wallet that is. So I think it's a good way to leverage the data that we both have to do smart targeting on the acquisition piece.

I think some of the things we're looking at the future are already mentioned by Vaibhav. So how can we drive retries? How can we avoid losing transactions? How can we help users finish their transactions smoothly? So is there retries that can be done? Is the reason for a transaction failing, is there a way that we can prompt the user inside the payment journey without the user having to jump out and figure out, log in or don't have balance? How do I top up? So I think that that's one that we've been discussing recently. And then we are also looking at bringing Antom Copilot into the scene with Foodpanda.

 Vaibhav’s team and our team are everyday working together, multiple touch points, there's a lot of interaction and the Antom Copilot can really further that experience. It's basically an AI assistant that allows Vaibhav’s team to ask anything related to Antom and the business that we have. What is the payment success rate if I enable such and such alternative payment method? Where is the contract that we signed two years ago? Where's the logo for whichever payment method? So I think these are things that can significantly further pay efficiency of work and speed of response. Obviously I'm not going anywhere and so is our team, but I think that will be an interesting way to bring the AI piece into efficiency and hopefully bring new insights and new facilities, not just to Foodpanda, but to the Delivery Hero Group as we look at expanding across other regions.

Another one that I'm super excited about is the agentic solution that we've launched recently. So that's not inside the Foodpanda app, it's actually inside A+ Rewards. So if you look at the A+ Rewards, let's say in GCash or others, users can actually tap on agentic to discover what is the best deal out there, what's the relevant deal for them according to their needs. So my company does a lot of food delivery ordering, is there a subscription I can tap on or I'm ordering this and this product today, what's the best deal for me? So agentic will not only filter and sift through opportunities, but help the users make decisions and most interestingly make the payment. So, it's an A to Z from discovery to decisioning to payment agentic solution.

So I think that a lot of AI agents have focused on consolidating information, summarising, collating and decision making, but I think the payment part is the one that we're most sort of focused on and excited about. And making that payment doesn't have to require us being the acquirer or the payment processor or the owner of that payment method in particular, but it's open to all. So I think that that could also be a good way to bring Delivery Hero more business but also, you know, help users to discover the exciting products that brands like Foodpanda have to offer.

Paul:

So quick idea of mine. So hear me out, right? Paul orders his lunch usually between 11 and 12, depending on his schedule. You know which outlets I'm ordering from because you have that history. So is that something you can maybe target your consumers like Paul and just remind him, hey, don't forget to order your lunch today because it's maybe 11.15. How do you feel about that?

Vaibhav:

That's a brilliant idea, Paul. We do a lot of this even right now. The entire setup is basically based on we understand our customers' habits. And as humans, the psychology of humans are creatures of habit. So at that 12 o'clock in the afternoon when you get a push notification or a nudge to say that, hey, Paul, do you want to order a burrito bowl? And hey, there's a $2 voucher for you if you order between the 12 - 2PM slot. So does that make you give you that nudge to sort of push over and make that order happen, right? So we often use this even right now.

But to build upon the future of checkout in general, the way I see it is that there should be no checkout. The future of checkout is largely intent and context-based conversion journeys that we have.

So often right now in lot of e-commerce platforms that we see across the entire spectrum, the checkout is a bit more like a step that needs to happen. So you select your choices, you can come to a cart, you look at the cart, you apply voucher and discounts, then you have to go through a mandatory checkout process. I feel that that's a bit more redundant from where the industry is progressing towards. Instead, the future looks to me like a bit more intent- and context-aware checkout journeys. So imagine a customer coming on a platform like Foodpanda with different needs. Sometimes you want to order a quick meal. Sometimes you want to order in a rush to the office or to somewhere in a meeting. You want to order a very quick bundled meal itself. Oftentimes you might just have to buy a subscription if you want to.

All of these are different payment journeys that the customer might have to go through and showcasing or showing that same checkout might not be the best way for us to interact with our customers.

So if you want to do a subscriptions enrollment flow, for us, you don't need to see payment methods that sort of take you through five step processes. Instead use the best most preferred tokenised payments instrument that you can offer so that your checkout journey for subscriptions context is seamless. In other cases if you imagining you are ordering something from our QC range of offerings or shops and demands that we have that payment method might be something that you want to use which is a membership loyalty card that you have and you can use them for building upon the cart that you have already created but transitioning to the order fulfilment journey in a more seamless manner. So that's how I see the checkout progressing for Delivery Hero and also for the brands that I look at Foodpanda, Foodora, Yemeksepeti.

Diego:

I'm just so excited about the future. I want it to happen now. So my vision is a checkout that doesn't exist. It only exists once. It's a setup, right? I download the app or I register an account for Foodpanda and I set up my waterfall.

Typically I want to pay with this card. If that card fails, I want to use this other card. Worst case scenario, link my bank account. I don't get points, but I want to get my food anyway, so take the money from my bank account. Otherwise this, otherwise the other, right? So you set up your waterfall. There might be also some toggle that says, you know, if there's a deal for a particular payment method, take it.

So I've seen that Foodpanda is one of the most advanced merchants that I've ever worked with in terms of having a dynamic, exciting checkout page where you might have a card tokenised, but there'll be a pop-up saying, if you switch to this other payment method, you'll enjoy 3% cash back or whatever it is. So that would also be set up and then you're done. Never again a checkout page experience. So that's one thing from a user’s standpoint that I see. I think also the decisioning for a person like me that is quite indecisive when I'm looking at food options would be great.

A bit of what agentic we were talking about before. Last night I landed late at the airport. I was heading home, I was feeling like a soup, that's as much as I know. So can you find me, I don't know, chicken soup that can get to my place within the next 30 minutes and the rest is done, right? I don’t want to go through reviews and all that. So that could be something else that is connected to checkout of the future. So I think that's how I see from a user’s standpoint. I think from a merchant’s standpoint, also super exciting things are coming and some of conversations that we've also had with Vaibhav and with other colleagues in the Delivery Hero Group, which is how to make that checkout page of the future from a merchant standpoint more efficient? So instead of having one acquirer, perhaps you can have 10 acquirers for each country. So if there is a transaction coming from one user for a particular card A and it's a corporate credit card, happens that Acquirer A has a better rate for corporate cards. But if it's a domestic, student card, use Acquirer B. You can create a lovely tree of all these use cases where different acquirers have different rates perhaps for different payment methods or there's a recovery right if one fails, take the other.

There might be changes in interchanges that make that decision dynamically change, performance in different payment service providers may alter with time, there might be latency or other issues there are maintenance that are affecting payment service providers so if all of this complexity could be handled by a layer of smart orchestration, I think that would significantly reduce cost, increase success rate, make transaction processing faster and safer if you also embed a risk management solution into that. So that's my view of checkout of the future could also step change the way that merchants like Delivery Hero are experiencing checkout.

Paul:

This has been a wonderful conversation with many thought-provoking ideas. I want to thank VK and Diego for your time today.