Amazon Pay extends Smart Store Program for local merchants across Bharat

• 18,000 merchants across Tier-II, III cities and towns onboard on Amazon Pay Smart Store; Smart Store program empowers SMBs to grow their businesses, drives customer footfalls, provides easy credit while purchasing instore, with widest payment options & attractive bank and brand offers 

Chennai:  Amazon Pay announced onboarding of 18,000 merchants across Tier-II, III cities through its ‘Amazon Pay Smart Stores’ program. Amazon Pay Smart Store is an innovative offline shopping experience which enables offline stores to be discovered by customers and improves instore sales by offering best in class affordability propositions across the widest array of payment options. It strengthens Amazon Pay’s endeavor to digitally empower offline Small and Medium Businesses (SMBs), retailers and micro merchants and unlocks new growth opportunities for them. 

Commenting on the initiative, Girish Krishnan – Director, Amazon Pay Rewards, said, “We are committed to enable merchants and customers with easy access to credit, reduce friction in their everyday transactions and maximize their savings. Amazon Pay will continue to offer innovative solutions to customers choosing to shop offline including better discoverability of nearby stores, affordability propositions like No Cost EMIs, bank discounts, value added services such as insurance, warranty and much more.” 

Merchants registered on the Smart Store Program witness a consistent incremental growth in their overall sales. The Amazon Pay Smart Stores Program is expanding in multiple cities across India, including Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, and Telangana. In the past one year, the program has seen an 72% increase in sign-ups from SMBs dealing in mobiles, electronics, laptops, large appliances, clothing, shoes, grocery, and kitchen. 

Amazon Pay Smart Stores Program was started in 2020 to facilitate improvements in offline shopping experience to provide seamless credit to offline shoppers, improve discoverability for offline stores and offer various affordability propositions for customers. Once inside a Smart Store, customers can simply scan the store’s QR code using the Amazon app to explore the products available within the store. They can also choose to pay by their preferred method including UPI, Amazon Pay balance, Credit or Debit cards; along with flexible EMI options and a wide range of Bank offers. 

The program provides merchants across India a unique opportunity to expand their business through the following value propositions:

• Provide the widest payment Instrument choice:  Amazon Pay Smart Stores enable merchants to offer the entire suite of contactless payment options including UPI, net banking, Amazon Pay balance: Money (PPI), credit, and debit cards, without investing in a separate point of sale device 
• Offer easy credit and make it affordable to customers: Customers can get easy credit at Smart Stores by using the EMI option with eligible bank credit cards or debit cards. With the Amazon Pay ICICI Bank credit card, customers get an always on, unlimited 2% cashback in all offline stores. With Amazon Pay Later, customers can instantly get a credit line at the store and pay for the transaction
• Widest range of offers sourced from our partners: Amazon Pay has partnered with major banks and financial institutions in the country to bring the best payment offers to customers shopping in offline stores, thereby helping them to maximize their savings. Further, merchants may offer reward coupons to attract new customers and increase customer conversion at the store through attractive incentives. These rewards and incentives help increase footfalls and build customer loyalty in offline stores.
• Drive more sales from Amazon Customers: With Smart Store Program, merchants can easily set up a store page with their logo and promote themselves to over 100M customers who are able to discover this storefront on their Amazon app. The enhanced discoverability drives more footfalls and sales for offline stores. While at the store, customers can read reviews, evaluate the best offers for each product transparently and also easily avail add-on services like insurance and warranty. 

“We have been using Amazon Pay since the past 10 months and it has helped us to increase our sales by 25%.  Approximately 60% of our customers choose Amazon Pay as their payment mode since purchases made with it are quicker and more convenient, and consumers love the instant rewards. With the Amazon Pay ICICI Bank credit card, we can give our customers better deals, thanks to the Amazon Pay Smart Stores program. We all know how much customers love discounts and offers, which we could achieve with the help of Amazon Pay. No other payment app has such seamless and instant cash back experience. We are able to tailor the offerings depending on customer needs thanks to Amazon Pay.” says Sandhya Kothari, Owner – Gizmo galaxy & Sun System, Mumbai

Nagendra Jain Store Owner Jeevan deep Agencies Udaipur, Rajasthan says “For the past two years, Amazon Pay has been my preferred payment option. 90% of customers are satisfied with the triple benefit offer from Amazon Pay, which includes Amazon Pay Instant Cashback + No-Cost EMI + Bank Offers. Customers value the ease of using a variety of payment options without having to worry about carrying cash or credit cards. Today, Amazon Pay is accounting for 40% of all store transactions and we appreciate Amazon Pay Smart Store Program for bringing together all the offers – we were able to raise total sales by 15%. All the payments are transferred to our bank account in one business day and I can easily track my payments with the help of Amazon Pay user friendly seller dashboard. We are able to convert cash customers to Amazon Pay because of the instant rewards and absence of post-transaction contacts. Best part of Amazon Pay Smart Stores is our store is now discoverable in Amazon.in app in stores near me section which will access to all the A.in user and it can help the increase store footfalls. Thank You for Making my offline store smarter with various features. “ 

 “We have been using Amazon Pay since 2020, Customers are happy to choose Amazon Pay as their payment mode since payments made with it is quicker and more convenient, and consumers love the instant cashback incentives. With the Amazon Pay ICICI Bank card, we were able to give our customers much better deals as they get unlimited 2% cashback. Customers primarily choose to pay with Amazon Pay in-store and we now have daily at least 10+ transactions through Amazon Pay.” says Vaishnavi, Store Owner Krithika enterprises, Hyderabad

Amazon Pay Smart Stores program has onboarded thousands of local shops across the country. In addition, several top brands, including OPPO, Lenovo, HP, Xiaomi, Samsung, Prestige, USHA, ASUS, More, Pepe Jeans, CCD, Barista, Miniso, Puma have already partnered with Amazon Pay to offer customers the best value and in-store purchasing experience through the program. By joining the Amazon Pay Smart stores program offline shops now can offer an assisted in-store shopping experience to customers, along with the best bank and brands offers as well as easy credit through Amazon Pay, making it a win-win proposition.

Learn more about Amazon Pay Smart store here. 

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