Zomato to shut down its loyalty reward points programme PiggyBank

Online food ordering and restaurant discovery platform Zomato is shutting down its year-old loyalty reward points programme PiggyBank next month.

“We thank you for being an inseparable part of the Piggybank journey, which will come to a close on August 12th. You can keep using your balance coins till then to get 10% OFF from select partner restaurants. After that, your remaining coin balance will expire,” the company said in an email to users notifying this shutdown.

Zomato confirmed this development to ET and said "A massive upgrade to our loyalty programme is in the works. We have therefore decided to discontinue Piggybank. Subscribers will be able to use their Z coins till 12th August."

Launched last year, Zomato allowed customers to earn back 10% of the order value through Z Coins into Zomato Piggybank.

In September last year, the company had claimed to have notched up more one million subscribers to Piggybank, with 30% of subscribers coming through referrals. It also claimed that over 2 million orders were being placed using Z coins and had stated plans to convert it into a paid subscription programme at Rs 299 per year. However, the strategy doesn't seem to have materialised.

That said, the Alibaba-backed food ordering firm has been doubling down on its membership product Zomato Gold and expects the subscription-based programme to bring in $20-25 million in revenue by the end of 2019, highlighting the growing importance of the premium product to its topline. The company had also shut down another subscription programme Zomato Treats late last year.

Zomato ended FY18 with a 40% growth in revenues at Rs 466 crore. The firm also cut its corners squeezing losses by almost 73% to come in at Rs 106 crore in FY18 as compared to Rs 390 crore in FY17, according to financial documents filed with the Registrar of companies.