RBI fines Amazon Pay’s India unit $374,000
The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has slapped a $374,000 penalty on Amazon Pay India for what it refers to as “non-compliance” with know your customer (KYC) and prepaid payment instrument (PPI) directions.
Amazon Pay’s India unit hit with penalty
“This action is based on deficiencies in regulatory compliance and is not intended to pronounce upon the validity of any transaction or agreement entered into by the entity with its customers,” RBI says.
The central bank claims that Amazon Pay India was not complying with “certain provisions” of the directions on PPIs and KYC, without elaborating on exactly which provisions were not adhered to.
RBI says it issued a notice to Amazon Pay India to show cause as to why a penalty should not be imposed.
It adds that after considering Amazon Pay India’s response, it concluded that the charge was “substantiated and warranted imposition of monetary penalty” amounting to INR 30.6 million.
Earlier this year, India’s government approved plans to promote the use of RuPay debit cards and mobile payments on its national Unified Payments Interface (UPI) digital payments network.
Many Indians prefer to use their phones to make and accept payments, a majority of which is done via UPI. As of October last year, UPI was handling around 6.5 billion transactions per month.
