The California-based fintech platform PayPal has announced its closing down of domestic business in India. It’s been less than four years after the entry of the American fintech giant in the Indian market, the company has decided to shut down its business in India. A company spokesperson said that from April 1, 2021, onwards they will focus all their attention on enabling more international sales for Indian businesses, and shift focus away from their domestic products in India. This means that they won’t offer domestic payment services within India from 1 April. Paypal did explain why it was closing down its business in India in a long statement.
The news comes as a surprise as the company has said last year that it was building a payment service powered by Unified Payments Interface (UPI). PayPal had previously partnered with various online services as a payment option including BookMyShow, Swiggy, and MakeMyTrip. As per the report, the company said that it has processed $1.4 billion in International sales for merchants in India in 2020. San Jose, California-based PayPal will instead focus on its payment business in cross-border, which means that the global customers across the country still be able to pay Indian merchants using the same service.
As per the report by TechCrunch, it further said that it will continue to invest in product development which helps Indian businesses to reach nearly 350 million PayPal customers worldwide thus increasing their sales intentionally and enable the Indian economy to return to growth. India has multiple players like Paytm, PhonePe, Google, Amazon and Facebook.
PayPal did not elaborate on why it was winding down the business but said its priorities had shifted in India in a statement. A report recently said the company which has amassed over 360000 merchants in the country was struggling to make inroads in India. To facilitate international payments for small businesses and freelancers, financial solution provider Razorpay joined hands with the digital payments platform PayPal in December 2020. Razorpay said in a press release that now the company’s partner businesses can integrate with PayPal and can get payments from more than 200 markets in a convenient, fast and secure manner.
