Amazon’s investment into the Indian market continued last night with the e-tailer announcing it had agreed a deal to acquire local online payments firm, Emvantage.
Emvantage’s portfolio includes a range of solutions including a payment gateway, mobile payment tools and
Amazon acquires India’s Emvantage Payments
pre-paid card platforms, and Amazon is hoping the deal will help “accelerate the development of convenient and trustworthy payment solutions” for its growing Indian customers – according to an article in Essential Retail.
As part of the acquisition, Emvantage employees will join Amazon’s payments team to work on developing solutions tailored to the local market. The deal is expected to close in the first quarter of 2016.
Srinivas Rao, director of Amazon Payments in India, commented: “We are laser focused on providing customers in India with a convenient and trustworthy shopping experience.
“Emvantage is a valuable addition to our team as we accelerate our payment offerings, ensuring the best in class online payment experience anywhere that customers shop with us.”
Two years ago Amazon revealed it was putting $2 billion into building infrastructure and increasing sales in India; it has also considered using the country as a test-bed for its mooted drone delivery service.
In its latest quarterly sales trading announcement, published in January, Amazon talked up its Indian operation by highlighting figures from comScore which showed that Amazon.in was the top eCommerce site in the country throughout the fourth quarter of 2015, which included the peak Diwali shopping season. Meanwhile, downloads of the Amazon.in mobile shopping app grew faster in the fourth quarter than any other eCommerce app in India, according to industry research firm App Annie.
And to highlight the online retailer’s growth in India, Amazon said sellers on Amazon.in sold more in the fourth quarter of 2015 than in all four quarters combined in 2014.
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