Amazon likely to infuse up to USD 1.4 billion into Indian payments subsidiary

BENGALURU: Amazon is likely to infuse up to $1.4 billion into its Indian subsidiary Amazon Pay. Regulatory filings sourced from business intelligence firm paper.vc show that it has increased Amazon Pay’s authorized share capital from $820 million to $2.2 billion, indicating that an infusion is on the way. This could also mark the single biggest fund infusion by the American e-commerce giant into India.

Despite its presence in the Indian market over the past few years, Amazon Pay has been unable to take on payment giants such as Google Pay, Phone Pe and Paytm. Amazon has also made investments in  financial service players such as BankBazaar, Tapzo, Capital Float, Qwikcilver and Acko. Amazon Pay, with a userbase of 100 million, has also integrated products of third-party players on its platform—selling motor insurance, digital gold etc.  

“A massive change in the authorized capital in and of itself does not indicate a major investment. But historical data suggests that a large infusion into the company is likely to follow very soon. Based on the number of shares that have been added, our estimate on the value of this infusion is approximately $1.4 billion. For the Amazon Pay division, this would be the first infusion for 2020. The last time it received money was in December 2019.

At the time, it received $450 million in 2019 and $185 million in 2018, Jayraj Patel, analyst at paper.vc said. Currently, Alphabet’s Google Pay, Walmart’s PhonePe, and Paytm fighting it out for the Indian market, onboarding users as well signing up merchants for their platforms. Amazon’s strong e-commerce capabilities has made it an important player in this area with four million merchants already using its services currently. 

$1.4 bn likely capital infusion by Amazon
$2.2 bn Amazon Pay’s authorised share capital
$450 mn was the size of the last fund infusion by Amazon, which was made in December 2019