Amazon Pay launches person-to-person payments through UPI for Android customers

Customers can use this functionality to settle bills/expenses with friends, lend/return money to family, pay rents, pay for services like house-help, newspaper bills, milk subscription and more. Customers can also make payments from their bank account to local stores nearby or to Amazon delivery associate at doorstep by scanning UPI QR codes using the Amazon app. 

Built on the Government of India-backed UPI platform, customers can send or receive P2P payments by simply selecting a contact from their phone contact book or entering UPI ID or bank account of the recipient, making money transfers more easy and convenient.

At present, customers lack simple and intuitive way of making money transfers. The current experience is sub-optimal due to lack of standard user interface, mandatory cool off restriction for new contacts and multiple log in steps. Bank transfers are a high customer friction process, especially for low value, high frequency payments.

With this launch, the customers can now send or request money instantly directly from the Amazon Mshop app. Further, Amazon Pay has made it easier for customers to make repeat payments by displaying recent transactions. The customers can easily access their phone contact book and initiate payments by simply tapping on the contact. Amazon auto-detects if the contact is a registered Amazon Pay UPI customer and enables instant bank to bank transfer. If the contact is not registered for Amazon Pay UPI, the customer has the option to pay using any another BHIM UPI ID or contact’s bank account. After selecting contact, the customer inputs the amount and enters UPI PIN to confirm payment. All P2P payments are secured through multi factor authentication involving customer’s phone, SIM details, and UPI PIN. The money is transferred instantly and both customer and receiver are notified through SMS alerts and in-app notifications.

“Our goal is to make Amazon Pay the most trusted, convenient and rewarding way to pay for our customers. The customers trust their Amazon app and we continue to expand payment use cases directly on the app. With this launch, we have the largest selection of shopping and payment use cases on the Amazon Android app which provides added convenience and control to our customers,” Vikas Bansal, director, Amazon Pay, said.

Amazon customers can make instant bank to bank transfers through the ‘Send Money’ or ‘Request Money’ link on through their Amazon Android app. As a launch offer customers can get up to Rs 120 cashback on Sending Money through UPI.

Amazon is a late starter, when it comes to P2P payments in India. Its rivals (Paytm, Google Pay and PhonePe) already support P2P, with Google Pay in the lead.  

With the launch of P2P, Amazon is incentivizing customers to use its service by offering up to Rs120 cash back by sending money through UPI.

The feature is available in the Amazon app for Android, through new “Send Money” and “Request Money” links.