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Samreen Ahmad · · 5 min readGoing solo could give Amazon Pay the edge in India
If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, then Amazon India may be paying a big compliment to GoTo.
The ecommerce giant is considering launching a standalone Amazon Pay app in the country this year. Currently, its payment services are found within the main Amazon app.
Photo credit: PradeepGaurs / Shutterstock
This is similar to GoTo’s strategy in 2023, when it announced the launch of GoPay, its digital wallet, as a standalone platform in Indonesia.
But why launch a separate app? This is all about driving up Amazon Pay users in the hopes of extending credit to them in the future.
In January, Amazon announced that it would acquire Axio, a fintech lending startup, for US$200 million to expand its credit services in India. The deal is awaiting approval from the country’s central bank.
The push into lending comes as the ecommerce firm faces greater competition in India, both from conventional ecommerce platforms and quick commerce upstarts. Indeed, some have called Amazon’s failure to be a first-mover in India’s quick commerce space “a significant misstep.”
The company is only now rolling out its 10-minute delivery service, Amazon Now, after rival services from the likes of Zomato’s Blinkit and Zepto have been established.
Can a standalone payments app and increased lending turn things around for Amazon in India? Or will these initiatives be costly distractions that simply push the firm into another highly competitive sector?
Breaking the duopoly
Amazon has struggled to compete with Google Pay and Walmart-owned PhonePe in enabling payments on the Unified Payments Interface (UPI), which is basically India’s instant payment system. The segment is practically a duopoly with the latter two firms taking an 85% market share.
Photo credit: PhonePe
Amazon India did not comment on the launch of a standalone Amazon Pay app but tells Tech in Asia that it has 100 million UPI users, 50 million wallet customers, and 5 million holders of the Amazon Pay-ICICI Bank card, India’s first co-branded credit card.
According to an industry source, super apps like Amazon, which bundle multiple services under one platform, can consume a lot of mobile data.
Betting on lending
Will it work?
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Following the acquisition of fintech lender Axio, Amazon is exploring launching a standalone Amazon Pay app in India.
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