Amazon is considering moving its payments services in India into a standalone app, three sources familiar with the matter told TechCrunch, as the e-commerce giant looks to expand acceptance of Amazon Pay in the country.
Amazon Pay is currently integrated into the company's flagship e-commerce app in India, allowing users to send money to individuals and merchants, pay bills, buy insurance and travel tickets, invest in mutual funds and digital gold, purchase travel tickets, and more.
The U.S. tech giant has been considering separating its payment services from its e-commerce app for about a year and plans to move forward with the plan in the coming months, two of the people said.
Some Amazon executives believe Amazon Pay isn't getting enough attention on the e-commerce app, and a separate app with specialized features could help the payments platform gain wider recognition in the country, one of the people said.
The sources, who asked not to be identified as the talks are confidential and ongoing, cautioned that Amazon, which has a number of other projects in India, could change plans and abandon the idea.
An Amazon spokesman declined to comment, saying the news was speculation.
Among apps on the Unified Payments Interface, the payment network that's the most common way Indians transact online, Amazon Pay ranks sixth. According to official data, Amazon Pay processed about 72.4 million transactions in July, accounting for about 0.5% of all transactions on the network. By comparison, Walmart's PhonePe processed 6.9 billion transactions and Google Pay processed 5.3 billion transactions.
Amazon is not alone in considering similar options in India, where its Chinese-style super-app strategy has had little success. Its biggest Indian rival, Flipkart, merged its fintech services into a single vertical late last month, two years after splitting off from PhonePee.