This initiative aims to encourage customers to visit small stores, which have seen a reduction in footfalls due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
Bengaluru: Amazon Pay has launched Smart Stores, an initiative that allows customers to scan a QR Code to explore products within offline stores and pay for them using various payment instruments available on the payments platform.
The launch comes at a time when leaders in the digital payment ecosystem such as Google Pay, PhonePe and Paytm have begun offering an expanded suite of products to merchants, giving them access to credit and enabling store discovery on their platforms.
“The basic QR code payment method is accepted at 4 million stores across India. But, Smart Store is a more evolved experience where customers can pay using any payment instrument, including EMI and bank offers,” said Mahendra Nerurkar, director and CEO of Amazon Pay.
Apart from offering customers a wider suite of payment methods, including Amazon’s own credit facility under the ‘buy now, pay later’ scheme, Smart Stores will also expose product listings on the app, allowing customers to see details and reviews of them on its app.
This is also being done to encourage customers to visit small stores, which have seen a reduction in footfalls due to the Covid-19 pandemic, and it can limit customer interactions with store owners or attenders. It also allows stores to run promotions that are visible to customers on the app.
“What we’re trying to do is bring the convenience of shopping online -- the way you can be informed, the various payment instruments that you get, and making it available to every customer in any store,” added Nerurkar.
Amazon’s payments business was growing at a fast clip, he said, without commenting on the number of Unified Payments Interface (UPI) transactions or the value of transactions the platform was clocking.
According to a Bernstein report, Amazon has closed the gap in terms of volume of UPI payments between Paytm and itself, which is in the third spot after Google Pay and Flipkart-owned PhonePe.
ET could not independently verify these values as the National Payments Corporation of India does not give a share-wise breakup of UPI transactions.
The launch comes at a time when leaders in the digital payment ecosystem such as Google Pay, PhonePe and Paytm have begun offering an expanded suite of products to merchants, giving them access to credit and enabling store discovery on their platforms.
“The basic QR code payment method is accepted at 4 million stores across India. But, Smart Store is a more evolved experience where customers can pay using any payment instrument, including EMI and bank offers,” said Mahendra Nerurkar, director and CEO of Amazon Pay.
Apart from offering customers a wider suite of payment methods, including Amazon’s own credit facility under the ‘buy now, pay later’ scheme, Smart Stores will also expose product listings on the app, allowing customers to see details and reviews of them on its app.
This is also being done to encourage customers to visit small stores, which have seen a reduction in footfalls due to the Covid-19 pandemic, and it can limit customer interactions with store owners or attenders. It also allows stores to run promotions that are visible to customers on the app.
“What we’re trying to do is bring the convenience of shopping online -- the way you can be informed, the various payment instruments that you get, and making it available to every customer in any store,” added Nerurkar.
Amazon’s payments business was growing at a fast clip, he said, without commenting on the number of Unified Payments Interface (UPI) transactions or the value of transactions the platform was clocking.
According to a Bernstein report, Amazon has closed the gap in terms of volume of UPI payments between Paytm and itself, which is in the third spot after Google Pay and Flipkart-owned PhonePe.
ET could not independently verify these values as the National Payments Corporation of India does not give a share-wise breakup of UPI transactions.
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