How Rappi Transformed from an On-demand Delivery Start-up into a “Super App”

RappiDelivery is a Colombian on-demand delivery company, founded in 2015, that provides same day delivery services of food and groceries from restaurants and supermarkets to consumers via an online app (similar to DoorDash and Uber Eats). 

Challenge

Rappi faced a challenge with many of their users adding items to their cart, but not completing the purchase due to a lack of digital payment options. These users often paid with cash upon delivery, as they did not have bank accounts or access to debit, credit, or prepaid cards. There was a desire to buy items from Rappi’s app but online shopping carts were being abandoned due to lack of payment options. Furthermore, traditional banks experienced downtime and transaction delays that affected Rappi’s delivery times.

Solution

To address this challenge and extend access to their platform to unbanked customers that were abandoning online shopping cards, Rappi extended their offering to include financial services within their platform. They decided to issue credit, debit, and prepaid cards to their existing customers across five countries in their local currency. In addition, customers could use the app to request cash delivery, explore various product categories, and receive fast delivery. Overall, this approach would enable Rappi to offer a range of products and services within a single digital ecosystem, enhancing their value proposition to their customers.

However Rappi had no experience in the regulation’s they need to follow to become a digital bank. They engaged Orion to advise them how they could launch digital banking services across five markets – Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Mexico, and Peru in local currency and in accordance with local regulations.

Orion brought in a team of financial services domain experts from our Mexico operations as well as digital product engineers, to build and implement the needed features to the existing platform as well as architect and build the new one and create road map for issuing cards. This multidisciplinary agile team focused on:

• Compliance with local banking regulations across Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Mexico, and Peru.
• Mobile Development: UX & multi-country app development, testing (unit, automation), and optimization 
• Business Analysis & Back-office Functionality: BPM, RPA automation, data analytics, business consultancy 
• Back-end Requirements: Microservices architecture, cloud-native & legacy compatibility, optimization & support 
• Fraud & Customer Operations Support: Anti-fraud tools setup & operation, analytics, payments back-office 

This multidisciplinary, agile team developed and integrated the following key features and reporting tools into the new mobile app:

• Anti-fraud  
• Back-office support 
• Business Analysis 
• Financial products and core banking integration 
• Payments 
• User Acquisition 
• User attrition & churn 
• NPS (Net Promoter Score) 
• Other (Travel and entertainment)

Impact

The new version of the app developed by Orion transformed Rappi’s business from an on-demand delivery startup to RappiBank – a completely digital bank in Latin America where individuals can use the app to open a credit/debit/prepaid account directly from their mobile device. The Orion team was able to meet Rappi’s accelerated time-to-market, enabling the company to:

• Issue 1M credit and debit cards. 
• Serve 10M+ monthly active users across LATAM. 
• Remain compliant with local business requirements and regulations.

“The involvement of Orion’s teams in the global setup and launch of RappiPay’s financial services in LATAM has been instrumental for achieving success.”

Juan Pablo Ortega

Co-founder, Rappi and Rappi Pay

Additionally, the new app expanded Rappi’s delivery model to include 3 revenue-generating subsidiaries: 

• RappiDelivery enables their operations in 11 countries in LATAM with more than 100K registered merchants  
• Users can book flights, hotels, and other travel arrangements on RappiTravel 
• With RappiEntertainment users can buy tickets for concerts, sporting events, theater, streaming events, etc.  

The partnership and collaboration with Orion have revamped Rappi’s business, transforming them into a completely digital bank in the region, with a global technological platform complying with local business requirements and regulations.