Amazon India Mulling Launch Of Separate Platform For Amazon Pay

Ecommerce giant Amazon’s digital payments offering, Amazon Pay, is reportedly due for a large scale change. 

The US tech major is exploring the possibility of launching a standalone app for its payments service in India, according to a report by TechCrunch citing sources. 

Sources told the publication that the move aims to enhance the usage of Amazon Pay, which currently sees a lone integration within Amazon’s main e-commerce app in the country.

Amazon Pay allows users to transfer money, pay bills, buy insurance, travel tickets, invest in mutual funds and purchase digital gold. These offerings are currently restricted only to an interface with Amazon’s ecommerce app. 

These considerations have been ongoing for the past a year as Amazon India executives believe that Amazon Pay might not be getting enough visibility within the e-commerce app, according to the report.

Upon Inc42’s queries on the development, an Amazon Spokesperson said, “We don’t comment on speculations”.

If a new platform materialises for Amazon Pay, it will add on to the existing emphasis that the ecommerce major has been putting on its digital payment services arm. In June, Amazon infused INR 600 Cr (about $72 Mn) in Amazon Pay India, taking its overall investment in the arm to INR 1,950 Cr. 

Amazon Pay India received authorisation from the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) to operate as a payments aggregator (PA) back in February. Besides, it also  holds a prepaid payment instrument (PPI) licence. 

In a bid to further bolster its fintech offerings, the entity is reportedly working with the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) to roll out credit services to customers through the Unified Payments Interface (UPI) since April. 

For the month of July, Amazon Pay facilitated the sixth highest UPI transactions in India. It witnessed a total of 7.24 Cr customer transactions in the month cumulatively worth INR 7,995.92 Cr.