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Business News/ News / India/ Amazon Pay looks to expand bank, card-network partners

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Amazon Pay looks to expand bank, card-network partners

1 min read 27 Sep 2023, 04:51 PM IST Join us

Shayan Ghosh

The Amazon Pay-ICICI Bank credit card accounted for about 28% of the bank's entire credit card user base as of 30 June

In July the RBI suggested restraining card issuers including banks and non-bank financiers from getting into arrangements with card networks that do not allow them to tap other networks (Photo: Reuters)

Mumbai: Amazon Pay, the digital payments arm of Amazon, will look to partner with more banks and card networks in the coming days as it attempts to grow its credit products for consumers and small businesses, a senior official said on Wednesday.

“We always continue to look at trends and customer problems," said Vikas Bansal, whole-time director, Amazon Pay. “We are absolutely interested in expanding our partnerships with banks and networks as we have it for all our offerings," he said when asked if the company was looking at introducing a RuPay variant of its Amazon Pay-ICICI Bank credit card.

At over 4.2 million, the Amazon Pay-ICICI Bank credit card accounted for about 28% of the bank's entire credit card user base as of 30 June. Launched in October 2018, the co-branded credit card is available on Visa.

“We have an offering for consumers and there is also strong interest in credit cards among small businesses," Bansal said.

In June 2022 the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) approved the use of Rupay credit cards on the Unified Payments Interface (UPI), a facility rival card networks don’t have. This is expected to boost the use of RuPay cards.

This July, the RBI suggested restraining card issuers including banks and non-bank financiers from getting into arrangements with card networks that do not allow them to tap other networks. The regulator said it found arrangements between card networks and issuers were not “conducive to the availability of choice for customers".

Bansal said, “That is a draft and is not a final guideline. [It addresses] banks, which will have to offer multiple networks to customers. Our partner bank is looking into this."

In March Amazon Pay announced it was collaborating with Bharat BillPay, the biller platform of the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI), to strengthen its loan repayment facility.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Shayan Ghosh

Shayan Ghosh is a national writer at Mint reporting on traditional banks and shadow banks. He has over a decade of experience in financial journalism. Based in Mint’s Mumbai bureau since 2018, he tracks interest rate movements and its impact on companies and the broader economy. His interests also include the distressed debt market, especially as India’s bankruptcy law attempts recoveries of billions worth of toxic assets.