Within a couple of months after infusing $392.3 million in its India operations, US retail giant Amazon has invested a fresh tranche of ₹590 crore (~ $80.2 million) into its Indian payment unit of Amazon Pay, marking Amazon the company's third such transaction in this year.

The funding came from Singapore-based Amazon Corporate Holdings Pvt. Ltd. and Mauritius-based entity Amazon.com.incs Ltd according to the regulatory documents filed by Amazon, which were sourced from business intelligence platform Paper.vc. Amazon Pay got the capital infusion on September 19 this year under the “Rights Issue ” by offering 59 crore equity shares.

Earlier in March, Amazon had invested in Amazon Pay (India) a sum of ₹195 crore followed by another ₹230 crore in July. In this year alone, the retail giant has invested a total of ₹1015 crore (~ US$138 million).

“We are on a mission to enable credit access for every Amazon customer,” Vikas Bansal, director, emerging payments, Amazon Pay, had said in a statement. “After the recent expansion of EMI on debit cards, we are very excited to bring this facility ahead of festive season.”

Eyeing to tap the upcoming festive season, last month, Amazon Pay unveiled card-less EMIs for selected customers. Amazon Pay EMI provides instant financing options to customers who may not yet have access to credit for purchasing high-value products, up to ₹ 60,000 by splitting their purchases into installments at low-interest rates.

Beside covering the upcoming festive season in India, this India investment by Amazon can also be seen as a reply to its local competitor in Digital Payments, PayTM, along with search giant Google's Google Pay, which is fast picking up its pace in Indian market. Just last week, One97 Communications, the parent of Paytm, raised $300 million from billionaire investor Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway Inc.

Notably, Amazon has infused fresh capital in its Indian payment arm despite stoppage of its rollout of a UPI-based payment product over lack of clearances from the Reserve Bank of India, which has demanded to localize the storage of all payments data.

In May, a report by Citi Research revealed that Amazon India's business could be valued at $16 billion right now and is expected to reach $70 billion in gross merchandise volume (GMV) and $11 billion in net sales by 2027.

Facebook-owned WhatsApp had too launched its peer-to-peer digital payments beta service in India. The entry of the messaging app, which has more than 200 million monthly active users, is expected to disrupt the unified payments interface (UPI)-based digital payments landscape in India, currently dominated by Paytm, says leading data and analytics company GlobalData.

Source - The Hindu
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