E-commerce giant Amazon is exploring the possibility of separating its payment service, Amazon Pay, from its main shopping app in India. The potential move, which has been under consideration for about a year, could significantly improve its position in the country’s digital payments landscape.

Currently, Amazon Pay is nestled within the primary Amazon app in India. Amazon Pay offers most of the services offered by other UPI apps including money transfers, mobile recharge, bill payments, buying travel tickets, buying insurance, subscriptions, etc. However, Amazon feels that the payments service is not getting the attention it deserves within the e-commerce app.

The reasoning behind this potential split is to give Amazon Pay a chance to shine on its own. A dedicated app could help the payments platform gain wider recognition and potentially grow its user base in India’s competitive digital payments market.

However, decoupling it from Amazon Pay and having it as a separate app won’t be easy. Getting approval from the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI), which oversees the Unified Payments Interface (UPI) system, is a challenge enough. Moreover, Amazon may have to reissue new UPI IDs to users, which could cause some disruption.