The firm’s revenue from operations grew 30% in FY21 to Rs 1,716 crore, up from Rs 1,315 crore, even as expenses at Rs 3,295 crore remained flat against Rs 3,234 crore recorded in FY20, the filings accessed by ET through business intelligence firm Tofler showed.
The increase in revenue could be on the back of growing traction for its service which include Unified Payments Interface, bill payments, online checkouts at e-commerce websites, as well as Buy Now Pay Later (BNPL) offered in tie up with local banks and non-bank lenders.
Amazon Pay cut down its advertising and promotional expenses by 11% to Rs 1,967 crore in FY21. Expenses incurred to process payments nearly doubled in the fiscal to Rs 879 crore as did legal and professional charges to Rs 16 crore, the filings showed.
The firm classifies its revenue from operations entirely as ‘payment processing fee’ which is the commission charged for facilitating transactions for merchants and customers on its network.
Amazon has been attempting to make steady inroads into India’s digital economy over the last few years competing with the likes of Paytm, Walmart’s PhonePe and Google Pay for a share of the burgeoning online payments market which has been growing steadily. Unlike its rivals, Amazon Pay’s UPI service doesn’t have a separate mobile application for payments; it comes bundled with its e-commerce app.
Interestingly, the e-commerce giant through its Singapore arm Amazon Corporate Holdings has
infused Rs 1,000 crore (approx. $134 million) in Amazon Pay India on November 3, ahead of Diwali, separate filings showed. This was first reported by news portal Inc42.
The infusion follows an earlier allotment for Rs 450 crore earlier this year by Amazon Corporates Holdings and Amazon.com.incs Limited, Inc42 reported.
This year e-commerce firms Flipkart and Amazon
saw record sales during their respective flagship festive sales where these firms made heavy use of rewards and instant cashback schemes for purchases.
Amazon Pay has several products in the Indian market aimed towards gaining transaction volume as well as creating value for merchants. Its Amazon Pay Later allows users to avail deferred payment service called Buy Now Pay Later (BNPL), where a customer pays for a product next month with an EMI option provided by a financial institution – a bank or an NBFC – on the backend.
Another popular service includes a co-branded credit card in partnership with ICICI Bank which is competing with tie-ups between Flipkart and Axis Bank.
The company’s UPI product – Amazon Pay UPI – ranks fourth among top UPI facilitators in the country behind Walmart’s PhonePe, Google Pay and IPO-bound Paytm. In October, Amazon Pay processed 68.8 million transactions worth Rs 6,286 crore. UPI in total saw 4.2 billion transactions worth Rs 7.7 lakh crore as per data from National Payments Corp of India.
