Payments space heats up as Amazon says 5 mn businesses using Amazon Pay

Amazon Pay, the digital payments of the e-commerce giant Amazon.com, said it has empowered over 5 million neighbourhood stores and businesses with its digital payments infrastructure. These SMBs (small and medium businesses), most of whom earlier transacted only in cash, can now accept payments from their customers using Amazon Pay’s QR (quick response) code.

This milestone was revealed by Amazon’s senior vice president, Russell Grandinetti, in conversation with Nandan Nilekani, founding architect of Aadhaar and co-founder of Infosys, at Amazon’s flagship event Smbhav.

Amazon is wanting to tap multiple opportunities ranging from insurance to credit via Amazon Pay. The firm is rapidly making inroads into India’s booming digital payment market and competing with Walmart-owned PhonePe, Alibaba-backed Paytm, and Google Pay.

Amazon Pay has now launched the “Amazon Pay For Business” mobile app to simplify accepting digital payments for SMBs. Currently available on Android, the app can be used by businesses across the country to register themselves, generate a unique QR code and start accepting digital payments within minutes. Customers can use any UPI app to scan the Amazon QR code and make a payment to these businesses.

“Small and medium businesses are the backbone of our nation’s economy,” said Mahendra Nerurkar, CEO, Amazon Pay India. “By enabling more than 50 lakh (5 million) small business owners and entrepreneurs to accept digital payments, we are expediting their inclusion into digital India. The Amazon Pay For Business app will further catalyse this adoption and enable merchants to enter the digital payments ecosystem in minutes.”

Nerurkar said the company has built and scaled its digital payment acceptance for SMBs using UPI that is inarguably one of the world’s biggest digital payments platforms. “We look forward to creating more products that transform the way India pays.”

Over 5 million small and medium businesses who use Amazon Pay constitute a diverse set of merchants and entrepreneurs. More than 2.5 million operate retail and shopping outlets such as kirana stores. About 1 million operate food and beverage outlets such as restaurants and small eateries. Over 500,000 offer services such as salons, close to 400,000 offer health and medical care while the remaining comprises of vocations such as taxi drivers, auto drivers and plumbers.

Digital payments in India will rise fivefold to reach $1 trillion by 2023, led by the growth in mobile payments, according to a report by financial services company Credit Suisse.