Amazon infuses ₹1,355 crore more into India payments venture

E-commerce giant Amazon has infused an additional ₹1,355 crore into its digital payments venture Amazon Pay India Pvt. Ltd, company filings showed.

The infusion was made by the company’s Singapore and Mauritius registered parent entity, according to a filing with the registrar of companies (RoC) sourced from business information platform Tofler. This takes the total funding in Amazon Pay India to ₹4,355 crore since its inception in 2016. Previously in June 2019, Amazon Pay India had received ₹450 crore from its parent entity.

The funding comes at a time when the online payments space has turned highly competitive with internet giants such as Google Pay and PayPal doubling down in India.

Facing heat from global brands, domestic entities such as Paytm, PhonePe, and MobiKwik have already started exploring other avenues such as online insurance and mutual funds to grow their revenues.

Digital payments market in India is expected to more than double to $135.2 billion by 2023 from around $64.8 billion as of 2019, according to an Assocham-PwC India study released in June.

The study also pointed out that India’s share of the worldwide transaction value of digital payments is also set to increase from 1.56% to 2.02% in the next four years.

Amazon Pay launched in India in 2016 as a prepaid wallet service in a bid to increase cashless orders on its e-commerce marketplace. The payments arm later acquired a prepaid payment licence from RBI and also launched peer-to-peer payments in April 2019. It also added support for unified payment interface (UPI) through a tie-up with Axis Bank in February 2019.