According to TechCrunch, three people familiar with the matter said that Amazon is considering turning its payments service in India into a standalone app, as the e-commerce giant aims to increase the use of Amazon Pay in the country.
Amazon Pay is now integrated into the company's main e-commerce app in India, allowing users to transfer money to individuals and merchants, pay bills, buy insurance and travel tickets, invest in mutual funds and digital gold, and buy travel tickets.
The U.S. tech giant has been considering separating its payments service from its e-commerce app for about a year, according to two sources, and plans to move forward with the plan in the coming months.
According to one source, some Amazon executives believe that Amazon Pay is not getting enough attention in the e-commerce app, adding that having a separate app focused solely on this area could help the payments platform become more widely known in the country.
The sources requested anonymity because the discussions are confidential and ongoing. They warned that Amazon, which faces many other challenges in India, could change its plans and still abandon the idea.
An Amazon spokesperson declined to comment, saying the news was speculative.
Amazon Pay ranks sixth among apps on Unified Payments Interface, the most popular payment network for Indians to transact online. According to official data, Amazon Pay processed around 72.4 million transactions in July, or about 0.5% of all transactions on the network. In comparison, Walmart’s PhonePe processed 6.9 billion transactions and Google Pay processed 5.3 billion.
Amazon is not alone in considering a similar option in India, where its Chinese-style super-app strategy has not been very successful. Its main Indian rival, Flipkart, last month integrated its fintech services into a single vertical, two years after splitting off from PhonePe.
