As part of Amazon’s commitment to digitally enable small & medium businesses (SMBs) in India, Amazon Pay today announced that it has empowered over 50 lakh neighborhood stores & businesses with its digital payments infrastructure. These SMBs, most of whom earlier transacted only in cash, can now accept payments from their customers using Amazon Pay’s QR Code.

This milestone achievement was revealed by Amazon’s Senior Vice President, Russell Grandinetti, in conversation with Nandan Nilekani during the session ‘innovating for a better India’ at Amazon Smbhav.

Amazon Pay has also launched the “Amazon Pay For Business” mobile app to simplify accepting digital payments for SMBs. Currently available on Android, the app can be used by businesses across the country to register themselves, generate a unique QR code and start accepting digital payments within minutes. Customers can use any UPI app to scan the Amazon QR code and make a payment to these businesses.

Mahendra Nerurkar, CEO, Amazon Pay India who moderated this session said “Small & medium businesses are the backbone of our nation’s economy. By enabling more than 50 lakh small business owners and entreprenuers to accept digital payments, we are expediting their inclusion into digital India. The Amazon Pay For Business app will further catalyse this adoption and enable merchants to enter the digital payments ecosystem in minutes. We have built and scaled our digital payment acceptance for SMBs using UPI that is inarguably one of the world’s biggest digital payments platform and look forward to creating more products that transform the way India pays.”

Over 50 lakh small & medium businesses who use Amazon Pay constitute a diverse set of merchants and entrepreneurs. More than 25 lakh operate retail & shopping outlets such as kirana stores, about 10 lakh operate food & beverage outlets such as restaurants & small eateries, over 5 lakh offer services such as salons, close to 4 lakh offer health & medical care while the remaining comprise of vocations such as taxi drivers, auto drivers, plumbers and more.

To start using Amazon Pay, merchants can download the Amazon Pay For Business mobile app on the Google Playstore by clicking here.