SUMMARY
The development comes within two months from Amazon’s investment of $33.5 Mn in Amazon Pay
During the festive sale, Amazon Pay is expected to offer huge cashbacks to customers
The platform is also looking to offer products such as debit card EMI and cardless EMI to increase sales of high-ticket items
Global ecommerce giant Amazon has invested $79.8 Mn (INR 590 Cr) in its Indian digital payment arm Amazon Pay.
Prior to this, in July 2018, Singapore-based Amazon Corporate Holdings and Amazon.com.inc invested $33.5 Mn (INR 230 Cr) in Amazon Pay, as per RoC filings.
The investments comes at a time when the Amazon Pay is predicted to offer huge cashbacks to customers during the upcoming festive sales. At the same time, the company is also looking to offer products such as debit card EMI and cardless EMI in order to push sale of high-ticket products.
The ecommerce platform has reportedly infused nearly 216.8 Mn (INR 1,600 Cr) into its Indian digital payment arm (Amazon pay) since 2016.
Earlier in March, Amazon Pay India head Mahendra Nerurkar had said that the company would continue to invest aggressively in its digital payments arm over the next several months.
Also, in June this year, in an move to make a stronger footprint in the digital payment industry, Amazon invested $5 Mn in Bengaluru-based digital payments company ToneTag which is now reportedly looking to roll out new payment modes for Amazon in the next three to four months.
Amazon is not the only platform boosting up its digital arm, as recently in August, Flipkart had invested $65.8 Mn (INR 451 Cr) in its digital payments arm, PhonePe, which recently acquired PoS business of Zopper.
Meanwhile PhonePe has also been speculated to be looking to raise funds separately with a view to catch up with its rival digital payment companies such as Paytm.
Further, the overall digital payment scenario in India is burgeoning with opportunities. With NPCI rooting on UPI 2.0, recording 405.87 Mn transactions in September for a value of $8.18 Bn (INR 59,835 Cr), the state of digital payments in India seems to be improving.
According to a July 2018 report by Niti Aayog, titled “Digital Payments – Trends, Issues and Opportunities”, the digital payments market In India is expected to grow to $1 Tn by 2023. The reports also stated that mobile payments are slated to rise from $10 Bn in 2017-18 to $190 Bn by 2023.
The push on digital payments has made Amazon India to cash upon an added advantage and has made its ecommerce transactions increased by 60%, as claimed by the company in a media statement.
Will the latest fund infusion in Amazon Pay will make Amazon India to claim the top spot in the upcoming festive sale, only time could tell.
[The development was reported by ET]
