Amazon bet big on payments in India



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Last month, Amazon India announced, without too much noise, allowing users of Amazon Pay to transfer money through the UPI (Unified Payments Interface), one of the ways the most popular for conducting online transactions in the country. This is the most recent decision made by the e-commerce giant in the digital payments industry, which marks its entry into what promises to be a global battle for this market.

Amazon Pay will compete for a larger tranche of P2P transactions against incumbent carrier Paytm, backed by Alibaba and Soft-Bank, Flipkart's PhonePe and Google Pay, and potential competitors such as WhatsApp, a company of Facebook Reliance Jio of Mukesh Ambani.

Among the countries on the planet that are at the center of its concerns, Amazon, led by Jeff Bezos, bet the most aggressively in the payments sector in India. This push comes after huge investments in its e-commerce business: the company injected 27,290 billion rupees into the flagship unit, Amazon Seller Services.

Amazon Pay has received a capital injection of Rs. 2,771 crores since its launch in 2016, according to regulatory documents from Tofler, a commercial information platform. More than half of this capital was injected in 2018, while Amazon was changing gear to quickly strengthen its payment business. The company has increased its investments as part of efforts to entice customers with refund offers, while continuing to launch new products aimed at all categories of Amazon users in India, according to three people aware of developments.

And Amazon, they say, is just beginning, indicating that its network of expenses and payments will grow.

"The cases of use of payments are more numerous than those of purchases. What we have seen is that customers who are doing business in the marketplace are more likely to use it elsewhere, and vice versa, "said Mahendra Nerurkar, director of Amazon Pay India, at STOI. "This essentially creates a delicate experience for customers who are following this cycle, and then they tend to buy more in the Amazon market."

He declined to discuss in figures the likelihood that a person will buy on Amazon if she uses Amazon Pay.

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<p>  The reason why Amazon India set up a payment business in India is very different from why it can continue To create one About four years ago, cash on delivery was the most used payment option, credit and debit card penetration was low, and uneven Internet connections were ruining the credit card. In 2016, the company introduced a prepaid portfolio on the purchase platform via a partnership with a gift card company QwikCilver, primarily to reduce payment failures and reimburse customers returning products. The following year, Amazon India obtained a portfolio license.
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<p>  Developments have pushed more Amazon customers to the prepaid option. Today, 65 to 70 percent of orders placed on Amazon are prepaid, which is above the industry average of 40 percent, according to the company. The big change in this direction occurred early last year when the percentage of prepaid orders reached the 60-point mark, added Nerurkar.
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<p>  While Amazon India is now competing with Flipkart, a subsidiary of Paytm and Wal-Mart, which runs PhonePe, a strong payment company will likely be an essential tool for retaining customers and getting data on their accounts. Consumption habits. Amazon has integrated major merchants such as Swiggy, a food retailer, the BookMyShow ticketing portal, the Cleartrip travel agency and the Netmeds online pharmacy, as well as covering utility payments.
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<p>  "We find [50-50] the same case of using customers conducting transactions on Amazon's anchor merchant and on others [third-party merchants]," said Nerukar, who is at service of the company for a decade.
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<p>  Vikas Bansal, Director (Emerging Payments) at Amazon Pay, ensures that users have more payment options while buying products on the platform, aligning Amazon co-branded credit cards , instant EMIs and now peer-to-peer transactions via Unified. Payment interface.
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<p>  The idea, he said, was to meet the needs of different groups of consumers instead of only interested in certain use cases. However, customer quality remains at the center of attention, as Nerurkar has no affinity for bargain hunters who change platforms on the basis of discounts.
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<p>  "Our recent survey showed that the main reason customers are willing to share data with a business is the payment experience. Therefore, it is important for a player like Amazon to activate all the payment tools. These data not only reveal buying habits, but also help merchants to work accordingly on loans and product stocks, "said Arnav Gupta, a digital payments monitoring badyst at Forrester.
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<p>  For Amazon, the more people use their payment products, the better they are for society, because these data remain in their ecosystem. "Amazon Pay is no longer just a tool for easier repayments or faster payments to the market. He has to spend at least $ 7 to $ 8 million a month. And that will increase if they focus on offline expansion, "said one person aware of the problem.
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<p>  Amazon uses QR codes for offline expansion. he works discreetly with his ToneTag shareholding company for faster payments in physical institutions. "You can pay at a Starbucks coffee shop or at other offline merchants from the Amazon app itself through the integration of Tone-Tag technology. This will remove a number of barriers and provide insights into consumer consumption patterns, "said the person.
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<p>  The person added, "They [Amazon] are working with ToneTag, which allows digital payments using sound waves, in both urban and non-urban markets. Soundwave technology works with versatile phones; and merchant devices are cheaper than point-of-sale machines. "
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<p>  ToneTag co-founder Kumar Abhishek declined to comment. Nerurkar said it was still in its infancy because the customer segment was different from the one that Amazon had been serving up to now.
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<p>  Current work strategies provide insights into Amazon's ambitions. However, there are major obstacles. For starters, Amazon will have to ensure that its customers meet KYC requirements for their portfolios. Otherwise, the portfolios will become unusable after September. The physical check did not work for Amazon. Nerurkar admitted that users had found it difficult to follow the process.
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<p>  Meanwhile, some believe that Amazon is a late competitor in the race for digital payments. "The UPI battle is between Google Pay and PhonePe, and the gap is now big enough. Getting closer to these companies is a daunting task, "said one Amazon executive. It also remains to be seen how Amazon's bet on the wallet is paying off at a time when most payment players are pushing their UPI platforms to users.
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<p>  For now, Nerurkar and his team can draw inspiration from Bezos' famous phrase: "Your margin is my opportunity."<br />
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