Amazon Pay starts offering peer to peer transactions using UPI via its Android app

One of the best things to have come out post demonetisation has to be the Unified Payments Interface (UPI). It allows instant peer-to-peer transactions (p2p) thanks to its real-time inter-bank settlement process and you can use your mobile phone and a virtual ID to do these transactions. Almost every digital wallet company offers UPI as one of the services with peer-to-peer transactions. So far, Amazon's digital payments arm, Amazon Pay, was only offering UPI payments through Axis bank. But that has finally changed.[caption id="attachment_5480781" align="alignnone" width="1280"] Representational image. Image: Reuters.[/caption]According to a report in The Economic Times, Amazon Pay could start offering peer-to-peer payments along with other payment products as part of its UPI push. Amazon's UPI ambitions had come to a halt after it failed to fulfil the data localisation mandates from RBI. But now that Amazon has adhered to all the data localisation norms, which means it is ready to start its p2p services.Vikas Bansal of Amazon Pay, India, said that Amazon has a highly engaged set of users who should adapt quickly with its payment products. Bansal said that bank transfers will bring in more features as one can now transfer through a virtual ID from bank account details."We will store the recently-done transactions which will make it easier for the user to make recurring payments," said Bansal.Like with Google Pay, users can use the Amazon Pay for instant bank transfers through the 'send money' or 'request money' link through the Android app. As a launch offer customers can get up to Rs 120 cashback on Sending Money through UPI.“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.” said Bansal.In terms of the UPI landscape in India, Google Pay is at the pole position in terms of the transaction value. However, if one looks at transaction volumes, it is Paytm that is ahead of the pack, followed closely by PhonePe and Google Pay.Google Pay to transfer payments worth Rs 43,000-45,000 crores in March, while Paytm and PhonePe dealt with transactions worth Rs 31,000-32,000 crore. That does happen to be a sizeable gap and as per BharatPe, a payments company that helps smaller merchants, Google Pay’s average transaction value is higher by a steady 50 percent compared to PhonePe and Paytm.When looking at the sheer number of transactions, Google Pay, PhonePe and Paytm, now process roughly 80-90 per of UPI transactions across the country. Each of the payments services clocked 221-225 million transactions in March out of the total 799.54 million.