Amazon India is buying Tapzo to ramp up its digital payments business

• Amazon Pay India- has successfully acquired Tapzo, a mobile app aggregator, in a deal that is reportedly value at $40 million.
  
• Tapzo is an app aggregator platform that allows users to access more than 35 apps at once, the likes of which include Amazon, Swiggy, Freecharge and Uber.
  
• With the acquisition of Tapzo, Amazon Pay is looking to increase transaction volumes and improve its core product offering.

Following Berkshire Hathaway’s push into India’s digital payments space with a ₹25 billion investment in Paytm’s parent company, Amazon has also closed an important deal to shore up its payments business. The company’s payments arm in India - Amazon Pay India- has successfully acquired Tapzo, a mobile app aggregator, in a deal that is reportedly valued at $40 million, inside sources told ET.

Tapzo, which is backed by Sequoia Capital, is a personal aggregator platform that allows users to access more than 35 apps at once, the likes of which include Amazon, Swiggy, Freecharge and Uber. The selling point for consumers is that they are not required to download or update the apps, thereby saving storage space and time. The app has been most successful when it comes to bill payments and phone recharges, logging close to 15,000 transactions a month for both.

While it remains to be seen just how Amazon Pay will harness and integrate Tapzo into its offering, it seems more likely than not that the app could be used to maximise Amazon’s reach by facilitating digital payments for a variety of services and products. It can also allow for the application of cashback offers for all kinds of transactions.

On 28 August, Amazon launched a feature that allows users to pay their bills using Amazon Pay - whether its for their mobile phone, electricity, groceries or gas. Amazon Pay is currently engaged in a battle with Paytm and Flipkart’s PhonePe for market dominance in the digital payments space and with the acquisition of Tapzo, it is looking to increase transaction volumes and improve its core product offering.

The Tapzo deal isn’t Amazon’s first acquisition in the digital payments space. In 2016, it acquired Emvantage, a Noida-based online payments provider, to start building its payments business in India. In October 2017, it was reportedly planning to increase its investment in Amazon Pay India from ₹4 billion to ₹20 billion. In April 2018, Amazon Pay spent ₹1.4 billion on a stake in Capital Float, a digital lending company, and made an initial $5 million investment in Tone Tag, a payments app, the following month.