After the closure of the food delivery business last year, Amazon India began experimenting with paying for lunch.
The company announced the introduction of a service for paying bills in restaurants through the use of Amazon Pay. So far, the distribution of this payment function is limited.
Currently, a bill payment service in catering establishments is offered in some areas of Bangalore. In this case, the list of restaurants that support the new offer of the Indian division of the e-commerce giant is limited.
Users can go to a section called Restaurants in the Amazon app and then make payments using credit/debit cards, net banking, UPI, or Amazon Pay.
Amazon India offers discounts when paying bills at some Bangalore restaurants. So far, there is no information about testing a new payment function in similar establishments in other cities of India. Representatives of the company did not respond to a corresponding request from the media.
Large food delivery companies Zomato and Swiggy offer restaurant payments and discounts to attract new customers. At the beginning of 2023, Zomato launched its own UPI service in cooperation with ICICI Bank. This service is designed to speed up the processing of orders and payment of bills.
The National Restaurant Association of India, a consortium in the hospitality industry, 2022 announced the undesirability of using financial products to pay bills in restaurants offered by firms specializing in the provision of food delivery services.
Amazon’s new experiment represents another attempt to expand its customer base in India. A report by the investment firm Sanford C. Bernstein indicates that the e-commerce giant’s activities in this country are fraught with many difficulties. Currently, Amazon is seeking to establish its presence in small Indian cities.
The report also notes that the firm is facing a tough regulatory framework and is lagging behind Flipkart, backed by Walmart. Not the best state of affairs of the company in the Indian market is confirmed by the fact that the retailer’s documentation on the results of operations for the first quarter of 2023 does not mention this country, which happened for the first time since 2014.
At the beginning of 2023, Amazon joined the Open Network for Digital Commerce, an initiative created by the Ministry of E-Commerce of India, with limited opportunities to create a network for sellers. This initiative aims to provide retailers with the opportunity to join a digital network that is not connected to central trading platforms.
As we have reported earlier, Amazon Uses AI to Speed Up Delivery.
