Amazon pumps in Rs 230 Cr in payments arm Amazon Pay

As all e-commerce companies in India heading for their festival sales, global e-commerce major Amazon has topped up its Indian payment arm with Rs 230 crore. The US-based e-commerce marketplace continues to invest in payments arm for having a parallel payment play with Paytm and Flipkart's PhonePe.

According to documents filed with the Registrar of Companies (RoC), sourced from paper.vc, Amazon Pay has allotted 23 crore equity shares worth Rs 230 crore to existing shareholders -- Amazon Corporate Holdings and Amazon.com.incs -- on the right basis.

Importantly, the Seattle-based company has invested over Rs 585 crore in Amazon Pay within a year.

The fresh funding comes after four months of company's investment of Rs 195 crore into its payments arm Amazon Pay. Prior to that, it had infused Rs 260 crore and Rs 130 crore into its payments entity in October and July 2017 respectively.

Besides facilitating payments on its own marketplace, it also enables transactions on BookMyShow, FreshMenu, redBus, Housejoy, Yatra and Haptik among several others.

Unlike the United States Amazon payments could only be leveraged for e-commerce purchases, Indian customers largely use Amazon Pay for bill payments, mobile recharges and for booking movie tickets and online food ordering.

Amazon Pay, which was launched in December 2016, witnessed a net loss of Rs 177.8 crore on total revenues of Rs 7.4 crore in FY17. The financial data for FY18 is yet to be filed.

In January, Amazon India had claimed that more than 60 per cent of its transactions are driven by digital payment modes including net banking and Amazon Pay balance in 2017.

The Jeff Bezos-led company also introduced UPI-based payments facility on its platform in February this year.

In the coming days, it will be worthwhile to watch how other e-commerce players such as Flipkart, Paytm and their payments subsidiaries will counter Amazon's strategy to grab a larger marketshare, especially during festival sales.

The development was reported by Moneycontrol via PTI.