Skip to main content
https://www.highperformancecpmgate.com/rgeesizw1?key=a9d7b2ab045c91688419e8e18a006621

Amazon Pay launches peer-to-peer payments in India

Continuing its investment in India, Amazon today announced the launch of person-to-person (P2P) payments via Amazon Pay for Android users in the country. Customers can now make instant bank-to-bank transactions through the UPI platform on the localized version of the Amazon app, allowing them to settle bills and other expenses with friends, lend or return money to family, pay for services and more. Notably, the new P2P service also will allow customers to make payments from their bank account to local stores or to Amazon delivery associates at the doorstep, who will scan a UPI QR code within the Amazon app.

The service is built on the Indian government-backed UPI platform, which is regulated by the Reserve Bank of India, and is designed for instant transfer of funds between bank accounts using a mobile device. With the Amazon Pay service, customers can either send or receive P2P payments by choosing a contact from their phone’s address book or by entering their UPI ID or the recipient’s bank account.

When a contact is selected, Amazon’s app will automatically detect if the person is a registered Amazon Pay UPI customer and enable the bank transfer. If the contact is not registered for Amazon Pay UPI, the customer then has the option to pay through another BHIM (Bharat Interface for Money) UPI ID or the contact’s bank account, as an alternative.

Amazon Pay also allows customers to make repeat payments more easily by displaying their recent transactions. And all the payments are secured through multi-factor authentication involving the customer’s phone number, SIM details and the UPI PIN, says Amazon.

When the money is transferred, both the customer and the recipient are notified through in-app notifications and SMS alerts.

“Our goal is to make Amazon Pay the most trusted, convenient and rewarding way to pay for our customers,” said Vikas Bansal, director of Amazon Pay, in a statement. “The customers trust their Amazon app and we continue to expand payment use cases directly on the app. With this launch, we have the largest selection of shopping and payment use cases on the Amazon Android app which provides added convenience and control to our customers.”

The move also will aid Amazon in its impending battle with Reliance Industries Limited (RIL) in the region. Recently, Amazon launched a program to manage the B2B inventory supply and management of a number of neighborhood mom-and-pop stores (aka Kirana stores), according to a report by the Business Standard. The program, which is live in three cities in Karnatsaka, allows retailers and store owners to order online and have products delivered to their doorstep the following day, the report claimed.

The plan is to expand this program across India, if the pilot succeeds.

There are some 12 million Kirana stores in India, and they still account for a majority (~90 percent) of retail business in the country. However, only 3 percent are tech-enabled. That represents a big opportunity for Amazon, as the stores themselves are beginning to embrace technology in order to compete with online grocers.

Amazon Pay’s P2P feature can help feed into the retailer’s larger plans to bring India’s cash-based customers and merchants into the digital age, at the same time it works to bring e-commerce to the region and cashless payments and other services to neighborhood stores.

Along these lines, Amazon confirmed in March it was rolling out the Amazon Smile code — a QR code that’s scanned to pay for items — to physical stores like Shoppers Stop, and others.

Combined, Amazon’s various payment initiatives can help create customer loyalty to the Amazon brand and build new habits among consumers.

Amazon is getting a late start, however, when it comes to P2P payments in India. Its rivals (Paytm, Google Pay and PhonePe) already support P2P, with Google Pay in the lead.  

With the launch of P2P, Amazon is incentivizing customers to use its service by offering up to Rs 120 cash back by sending money through UPI.

The feature is available in the Amazon app for Android, through new “Send Money” and “Request Money” links.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Uber co-founder Garrett Camp steps back from board director role

Uber co-founder Garrett Camp is relinquishing his role as a board director and switching to board observer — where he says he’ll focus on product strategy for the ride hailing giant. Camp made the announcement in a short Medium post in which he writes of his decade at Uber: “I’ve learned a lot, and realized that I’m most helpful when focused on product strategy & design, and this is where I’d like to focus going forward.” “I will continue to work with Dara [Khosrowshahi, Uber CEO] and the product and technology leadership teams to brainstorm new ideas, iterate on plans and designs, and continue to innovate at scale,” he adds. “We have a strong and diverse team in place, and I’m confident everyone will navigate well during these turbulent times.” The Canadian billionaire entrepreneur signs off by saying he’s looking forward to helping Uber “brainstorm the next big idea”. Camp hasn’t been short of ideas over his career in tech. He’s the co-founder of the web 2.0 recommendatio
Post a Comment
Read more

Drone crash near kids leads Swiss Post and Matternet to suspend autonomous deliveries

A serious crash by a delivery drone in Switzerland have grounded the fleet and put a partnership on ice. Within a stone’s throw of a school, the incident raised grim possibilities for the possibilities of catastrophic failure of payload-bearing autonomous aerial vehicles. The drones were operated by Matternet as part of a partnership with the Swiss Post (i.e. the postal service), which was using the craft to dispatch lab samples from one medical center for priority cases. As far as potential applications of drone delivery, it’s a home run — but twice now the craft have crashed, first with a soft landing and the second time a very hard one. The first incident, in January, was the result of a GPS hardware error; the drone entered a planned failback state and deployed its emergency parachute, falling slowly to the ground. Measures were taken to improve the GPS systems. The second failure in May, however, led to the drone attempting to deploy its parachute again, only to sever the line
Post a Comment
Read more

ProtonMail logged IP address of French activist after order by Swiss authorities

ProtonMail , a hosted email service with a focus on end-to-end encrypted communications, has been facing criticism after a police report showed that French authorities managed to obtain the IP address of a French activist who was using the online service. The company has communicated widely about the incident, stating that it doesn’t log IP addresses by default and it only complies with local regulation — in that case Swiss law. While ProtonMail didn’t cooperate with French authorities, French police sent a request to Swiss police via Europol to force the company to obtain the IP address of one of its users. For the past year, a group of people have taken over a handful of commercial premises and apartments near Place Sainte Marthe in Paris. They want to fight against gentrification, real estate speculation, Airbnb and high-end restaurants. While it started as a local conflict, it quickly became a symbolic campaign. They attracted newspaper headlines when they started occupying prem
Post a Comment
Read more