Amazon Pay diversifies UPI offerings by foraying into P2P transactions

Amazon Pay India Pvt. Ltd, the local digital payments arm of global e-commerce major Amazon Inc, on Monday announced the launch of peer-to-peer (P2P) payments via the Unified Payments Interface (UPI) for Android users.

Amazon customers can now make instant bank-to-bank transfers using the UPI platform -- a real-time payment system -- on the Amazon app through the ‘Send Money’ or ‘Request Money’ links.

Customers can use this functionality to settle bills/expenses with friends, lend/return money to family, pay rent, pay for services such as house-help, newspaper bills, milk subscription and more, Amazon Pay said in a statement.

Amazon had been testing its UPI payments service for quite a while before rolling out UPI-based payments for Android users in February. 

Customers can also make payments from their bank account to local stores nearby or to an Amazon delivery associate at the doorstep by scanning UPI QR codes using the Amazon 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,” said Vikas Bansal, director at Amazon Pay.

The new service will auto-detect if the contact is a registered Amazon Pay UPI customer. If the contact is not registered for Amazon Pay UPI, the customer has the option of paying using any another BHIM UPI ID or the contact’s bank account.

Currently, 129 banks are live on UPI besides 48 third-party apps including Google Pay and other Indian payments platforms such as PhonePe and Paytm, Mobikwik, Uber and Swiggy.

UPI’s popularity has been rising steadily, with nearly 800 million such transactions recorded in March.