E-commerce giant Amazon has infused Rs 450 crore in its digital payments arm Amazon Pay (India), taking the total funding to over Rs 1,000 crore during the first half of the calendar year 2018-19. Out of the Rs 450 crore, Amazon Singapore has pumped in Rs 449 crore and the remaining Rs 1 crore is funded by Amazon Mauritius. Amazon Pay received the capital infusion on June 6.
So far, Amazon has invested a total of Rs 3,221 crore in Amazon Pay, since its launch in 2016.
Last month, Amazon India launched domestic flight bookings, money transfer options, utility bill payment on the Amazon Pay. In April this year, Amazon Pay launched person-to-person (P2P) payments for Android users. This facility helps in instant bank-to-bank transfers using Unified Payments Interface (UPI) platform on the Amazon app.
In December last year, Amazon invested Rs 2,200 crore in Amazon.in.
For Seattle-based Amazon, India is one of the most important markets, which explains the continuous investment here. Hence, Amazon's focus on its payment digital arm is to tap the increasing digital payment market in India. At present, Amazon Pay is competing with Alibaba and Softbank-backed Paytm, Walmart -owned PhonePe, Google's mobile payment service Google Pay and and new entrant Facebook-owned WhatsApp.
According to a new ASSOCHAM-PwC India study, India's digital payments transaction value is projected to more than double to $135.2 billion (Rs 9.44 lakh crore) in 2023 from $64.8 billion this year.
(Edited by: Mansi Jaswal)