Amazon invests Rs 450 Cr in India payments unit
Amazon's infusion into its payments arm comes at a time when companies like Paytm, Flipkart-owned PhonePe, Google Pay, and others are making significant investments to tap the booming digital payments market in India.
American retail giant Amazon has infused Rs 450 crore into its payments unit in India, Amazon Pay, according to regulatory documents.
Amazon Pay (India) has allotted 45 crore shares of Rs 10 each aggregating to Rs 450 crore to Amazon Corporate Holdings and Amazon.com.incs Ltd, documents filed with Corporate Affairs Ministry showed.
The documents, sourced by business intelligence platform Tofler, said the date of allotment was June 6, 2019. Amazon Corporate Holdings has pumped in Rs 449.95 crore, while the remaining came from Amazon.com.incs Ltd. Emails sent to Amazon India did not elicit a response.
The funding comes at a time when companies like Paytm, Flipkart-owned PhonePe, Google Pay, and others are making significant investments to tap the booming digital payments market in India. Many of these firms have been offering significant cashbacks to woo customers to use their platforms to make payments for utilities and shopping.
In January, Amazon pumped in Rs 300 crore into Amazon Pay, documents filed with Registrar of Companies (RoC) show. The funding came through Singapore and Mauritius-based group entities – Amazon Corporate Holdings Private Ltd and Amazon.com.Incs Limited.
Amazon Pay (India) Private Ltd incurred a loss of Rs 334.2 crore in FY18, an increase of 88 percent, compared to the Rs 178 crore it incurred in the previous financial year. The increase in loss incurred by the fintech company was despite a whopping increase in its operational revenue to Rs 389 crore in FY18, from a meagre revenue of Rs 4.1 crore in FY17.
The digital payments arm of the ecommerce major in August 2018 acquired Bengaluru-based app aggregator Tapzo to ramp up its online payments business. The acquisition came in the backdrop of increased competition between rival ecommerce players’ payments arms – Amazon Pay and PhonePe.
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