 "With Rs 5.9-bn infusion, Amazon jacks up India payments unit thrice in 2018")
In a bid to take on rival digital payments services such as Paytm, PhonePe and Google Pay, US retail giant Amazon has pumped in a fresh tranche of Rs 5.9 billion (approx $80 million) into its Indian payment unit Amazon Pay. It is the third such transaction this year.
The bulk of the investment was made by Amazon Corporate Holdings Pvt Ltd on September 19, according to documents filed with the Registrar of Companies (RoC) sourced from business intelligence platform Paper.vc.
The e-commerce giant had infused AmazonPay with Rs 1.95 billion in March this year and another Rs 2.3 billion in July. So, the total investment Amazon has made in the unit just this year stands at Rs 10.15 billion (approx $138 million).
Amazon’s investment in its payment unit in India comes despite the stalling of its rollout of a UPI-based payment product over lack of clearances from the Reserve Bank of India. The apex bank, with its demand that companies localise the storage of all payments data, has made several other global firms such as Google and WhatsApp reassess their play in the space.
The country’s largest digital payments firm Paytm and Flipkart-owned PhonePe have upped the ante against foreign players in India’s digital payments space.
While neither has attacked Amazon directly, PhonePe accused Google and Facebook of lobbying against the data localisation rule to continue evading taxes, while Paytm accused Google of sharing payments data with affiliates.
Amazon, on the other hand, has been growing its payments service by promoting it on its shopping platform. The company has also introduced a way for customers to pay bills and recharge mobile phones. It has also signed up third-party services such as Yatra, BookMyShow, RedBus, FreshMenu and others to accept payments through Amazon Pay.
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