Colombian superapp Rappi has announced on Monday an aid package for partner restaurants due to the worsening of the COVID-19 pandemic in Brazil. Among the measures, is the allocation of BRL 100 million for loans that may be granted throughout 2021. The company said that in the last three months it has already invested BRL 86 million in loans to help merchants to face the crisis.
Besides, the company will also suspend fees for new partners for 90 days and transfer payments to merchants within 7 days after the sale. Until then, the deadline for the transfer was 14 days, much less than the period practiced before the pandemic, which was 30 days.
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For consumers, Rappi will release Rappi Prime, the platform’s premium subscription service, for 30 days for all users. The service offers free shipping and also access to discounts on the platform.
According to Sergio Saraiva, president at Rappi Brazil, the aid package is a way to help the sector that has been strongly affected by the pandemic crisis. “We saw how the restaurants came together to save the sector and keep thousands of jobs and that’s why we decided to support our partners more.”
Last week, iFood also announced a package of measures to help partner restaurants, such as lower fees and more access to credit in order to back its more than 200,000 partner restaurants.
In order for partners to keep their cash balanced at this time, iFood further announced that it will continue to anticipate payments (up to 7 days after the sale) at no financial cost to restaurants for the next 3 months, which represents potential anticipation of BRL 4 billion of receivables in the market.
