Amazon pumps USD 96 million into its Indian payment arm ahead of festive sales season

In preparation for the upcoming festive sales season in India, US-based online retail giant Amazon has injected USD 96 million into its Indian digital payment arm Amazon Pay.

According to the regulatory documents sourced by local media

, this round of investment comes from its Singapore-based entity Amazon Corporate Holdings Private Ltd and Amazon.com Inc Limited, Mauritius. Four-year-old Amazon Pay has raised a total of USD 691 million. It received USD 185 million in January this year from its parent entity.

Amazon Pay has partnered with several local banks in the country to offer additional discounts and cashback during the forthcoming holiday sales which start October 17. Amazon Pay competes with Google Pay, Paytm, and Flipkart’s PhonePe. While Amazon Pay hasn’t revealed its user numbers, according to a report by Bernstein it was ahead of Paytm in May this year in terms of total transactions. The company recently launched a credit card bill payment service to compete with Cred started by second-time entrepreneur Kunal Shah.

Both Amazon India and Flipkart have received additional funding this year from their holding companies ahead of the festive period to bolster their capabilities as they expect an upsurge in orders from October to December. While Amazon pumped USD 153 million into its Indian entity last month, Walmart invested USD 560 million as part of the new round in Flipkart through the latter’s Singapore-based parent entity.

The e-tailers are busy onboarding sellers as well as expanding fulfillment centers across the country. Amazon has announced at least four new fulfillment centers in India. Flipkart, on the other hand, has taken over Walmart’s six wholesale stores in India as its fulfillment centers.

This year, Amazon India and Flipkart might see a third and equally big contender JioMart vying for the market share. Reliance’s new e-commerce venture JioMart plans to leverage WhatsApp and its existing chain of stores to push online sales during the holiday period. However, it has yet to announce any mega sale event for this year.

According to Bengaluru-based consultancy firm RedSeer, the combined e-commerce sales during the festive period could reach USD 7 billion, up from USD 3.8 billion last year, recording a growth of 75%.

Correction: The earlier version of the story mistakenly said Amazon Pay raised USD 9.6 million, instead of USD 96 million.