Amazon Infuses INR 225 Cr Into India Payments Subsidiary

SUMMARY

To date, the payments subsidiary of Amazon India has received a fund infusion of up to INR 5,200 Cr

Amazon Pay has been adding new payments categories and building partnerships in the past few months

The fresh funding comes amid reports of Amazon’s plans of $1.4 Bn fund infusion into its payments arm

Amazon.com Inc, the parent entity of the US-based ecommerce giant, has infused fresh capital of INR Rs 225 Cr into its India payments subsidiary, Amazon Pay (India) Pvt Ltd, according to regulatory filings with the Registrar of Companies.

Most of the fresh capital came to Amazon Pay India through Amazon Corporate Holdings, a Singapore-based parent entity that operates the e-commerce giant’s India businesses. An additional investment also came from Mauritius-based Amazon.com Inc.

Amazon Pay India has, to date, received around INR 5,200 Cr out of which INR 2,000 Cr came in multiple tranches in the last two years, according to Economic Times.

The fresh funding comes a few months after reports surfaced regarding Amazon’s $1.4 Bn funding plans for Amazon Pay. In fact, the digital wallet operated by Amazon has been stepping up its payment offerings to take on key contenders like Paytm, PhonePe and Google Pay.

Set up in 2017, Amazon Pay began its operations in India after a delay of one year in order to comply with data localisation and data privacy regulations. In April 2019, the company started facilitating P2P (peer-to-peer) transactions as an add-on to its original customer-to-merchant transactions. Since then, it has been providing online payment services via the BHIM app on the UPI.

Recently, the company launched credit card payments on its digital payments app and customers can pay via internet banking or the UPI. In addition, the company offers insurance services on its platform. Amazon Pay is also stepping up its partnerships and has tied up with the Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation (IRCTC) to enable users to book train tickets.

Digital transactions have been on the rise after the UPI emerged as the most preferred transaction mode for India’s internet users. The latest data from December 2020 showed that UPI transaction volumes grew nearly 6.7% from 2.07 Bn in October to 2.21 Bn in November 2020.

According to KalaGato’s latest teardown report on UPI-enabled fintech platforms, from November 2020, Google Pay has emerged as the most dominant payments app in terms of reach among internet users (65% reach), followed by PhonePe with 63% and Paytm with 57% reach as of November 2020.