Barely four years after introducing local digital payments in India, PayPal has decided to shut down the service. However, the company is reportedly continuing its facilitation of cross-border payments with a focus on small and medium-sized enterprises doing business overseas.
In a statement, the company announced that starting April 1, 2021, the American digital payment giant would focus solely on its international payments services. Ironically, when reports of such a move first surfaced last December, the company vehemently denied it.
PayPal did not elaborate on the reason for its decision to exit the second-largest internet market. In a prepared statement, the company said: “We believe PayPal can have the greatest positive impact on India’s economic recovery by pivoting our business to support our customers where they need us most. Starting April 1, we will focus our full attention on growing international sales for Indian businesses and shift our focus away from our domestic products in India.”
The company has been present in India for over a decade
Offering cross-border payment options for India, initially starting with money transfers from non-resident Indians to their families in their home country.
It seems that PayPal, which had over 3,60,000 domestic Turkey WhatsApp Number List merchants and processed $1.4 billion in international sales, was unable to compete with the new-age local payment processors. Various leading domestic companies like Book My Show, Make My Trip and Swiggy etc. were using PayPal’s payment services and while PayPal had designated travel services as one of the key focus areas in India, all local references were removed from its Indian website.
The pandemic outbreak that has paralyzed the entire travel and tourism industry may have had adverse effects on PayPal.
Tough competition and local politics
Although the domestic payments market has boomed WhatsApp Number Database of late and services like Razorpay, PayU India, MobiKwik’s Zaakpay and Paytm Payments Gateway have flourished, PayPal has been reported to be struggling to gain a foothold in the local market.
However, it was the arrival of UPI-based payment services that proved to be the final nail in the coffin. Services like Paytm, PhonePe, Google Pay, Amazon Pay and WhatsApp Pay, which rely on this new payment model, have been steadily increasing their market share.
Media reports said that while PayPal wanted to roll
Out payment services in the country on its own, it Bulk Database was not comfortable limiting itself to the UPI route. The indecision delayed the introduction of its services, which gave its competitors a head start. PayPal lost the first-mover advantage despite being one of the largest payment processing services in the world.
In November 2020, NPCI introduced a new policy that caps the share of Unified Payments Interface transactions that a single payment app can process. The policy states that from January 2021, third-party apps providing payment services through UPI can process a maximum of 30% of transaction volumes from January 1, 2021.
