Amazon India has received the final nod from the Reserve Bank of India’s (RBI) to launch its own digital wallet in India.
The online retail giant had applied for what is called a Prepaid Payment Instrument (PPI) licence nearly a year ago and its services will not be restricted to Amazon-based transactions, reported the LiveMint.
In December, Amazon had launched its Pay Balance service in order to boost cashless transactions. While Pay Balance works in a similar manner to other mobile wallet services, it was restricted to transactions on Amazon.
“We are pleased to receive our PPI licence from the RBI. Our focus is providing customers a convenient and trusted cashless payments experience. RBI is in the process of finalising the guidelines for PPIs. We look forward to seeing a continuation of the low-limit wallet dispensation with simplified KYC (know-your-customer norms) and authentication. This will allow us to help customers adopt digital payments at scale and thereby contribute towards making India a less-cash economy,” said Vice-President, Amazon India, Sriram Jagannathan.
Amazon’s new wallet service will address a vital problem in the world of payments — like other wallet services such as Paytm, it will help customers bypass the two-step authentication process for online payments using credit or debit cards and makes the process smoother for online shoppers, thus plugging a key gap in the payments process that reduces the risk of loss of business from online shoppers.
