Amazon Pay enters insurance and credit business
Amazon India is planning to enter multiple sectors in the country ranging from insurance, wealth management to credit. The world’s largest online retailer launches insurance distribution business in India through its digital payments arm Amazon Pay.
“We are making inroads into these spaces. Buying insurance is typically not an easy purchase. There’s a lot of fine print. So, a lot of customer feedback is can you ‘Amazonify insurance’ and make it very simple. That problem statement energizes us.” said Mahendra Nerurkar, CEO and MD for Amazon Pay India, during a fireside chat at Global Fintech Fest 2020 on Wednesday night.
Amazone is tying up with Acko General Insurance to offer insurance for two-wheelers as well as four-wheelers. It has also launched Covid-19 health insurance to all its sellers in the country. In April, Amazon launched ‘Amazon Pay Later’, a service that extends a virtual line of credit to eligible customers. Digital lender Capital Float and The Karur Vysya Bank (KVB) are the partners for this.
According to Mahendra Nerurkar “I think there are a lot of opportunities as we think about micro-insurance products. Whether you’re buying a product on Amazon or a flight ticket or you’re taking a cab, you will see a lot of innovation in all those spaces from us in the coming months”.
Amazon’s new launches as a corporate agent to become a full-fledged financial services platform. They now offers UPI, wallet and co-branded credit card services to users.
Amazon pay,s main competitors like Walmart-owned PhonePe, Alibaba-backed Paytm, and Google’s mobile payment service Google Pay are also extending their services to insurance products on their platforms through tie-ups with insurers.
Amazon Pay started as a wallet provider years ago. Now they offer a wide range of categories like money transfer, bill payment to paying the merchants. Fundamentally what Amazon Pay is trying to solve is taking the cash customers on the digital mode of payment and then enabling them with more services. Nerurkar said the Covid-19 pandemic has provided a tailwind to an already fast-growing Unified Payments Interface (UPI) ecosystem
