Ecommerce giant Amazon has made a fresh infusion of Rs 230 crore in Amazon Pay through a Board resolution in the last week of June’ 2018. Amazon Pay is the digital wallet cum online payment gateway floated by Amazon.
The funds will be invested by 2 Amazon entities, Amazon Corporate Holdings and Amazon.com and in return, Amazon Pay (India) will allot them equity shares at a face value of Rs 10
The US online retail giant has been investing heavily into Amazon Pay so that it is able to strengthen itself and take on tough competitors in the form of Phone Pe run by arch-rival Flipkart and Paytm, which is backed by Alibaba, the Chinese Group.
Commenting on the development, the company’s spokesperson has shared with the media that Amazon stands committed to the digital payments initiative being pursued by the Indian government, and they would work in close coordination with all the agencies included in the ecosystem, whether banks or other partners and ensure their customers enjoy a hassle-free system of making payments for the products and services they avail on the Amazon site.
Amazon Pay is likely to broaden the basket of services it is currently offering its customers and the freshly inducted funds may go towards this purpose as well. It may be recalled that the investments made by Amazon on Amazon Pay within the last one year, amount to Rs 392 crore, before the current tranche of Rs 230 crore. If one goes by the statements made by Amazon Founder Jeff Bezos, they are betting big on the Indian market and funds will never be the constraint in creating the right infrastructure and effective business modules.
Their resolve in this direction would only have got further boost after Walmart announced its takeover of Flipkart, which, if all goes well, may get formalized by the end of this year. Amazon has to be fully prepared for the head-to-head fight for supremacy in the Indian market.