Amazon Pay loses Rs 3.3 billion in FY18 to capture user-base with discounts

Amazon Pay, the digital payments division of e-commerce firm Amazon India, reported net loss of Rs 3.34 billion in the financial year 2017-18 on account of heavy spends on discounts and offers to win new users in the highly competitive e-payments market.

The loss swelled from Rs 1.78 billion in the preceding year.

Amazon Pay spent in total Rs 7.3 billion on promotional offers, office expense and manpower, company filings reveal, as it managed to boost total income to nearly Rs 4 billion, from meagre Rs 41 million a year prior.

Total income, in the case of Amazon Pay, represents the total value of goods paid for through the app.

After early movers like Paytm, players like Amazon Pay and PhonePe, a unit of Flipkart, have stepped on the gas to aggressively chase growth in users and transactions.

To this end, like others, Amazon Pay offered cash-backs to users paying though the app on Amazon.in and other services like RedBus, Swiggy and Netmeds, among others.

At the moment, payment firms are fighting tooth and nail in the market. Losses at PhonePe, an aggressive competitor, also swelled over 600 per cent to Rs 7.9 billion in 2017-18.