PayPal reportedly is shutting down business in India, less than four years after they started local operations in India. “From 1 April 2021, we will focus all our attention on enabling more international sales for Indian businesses and shift focus away from our domestic products in India. This means we will no longer offer domestic payment services within India from 1 April,” said a company spokesperson.
The long statement issued by the American giant did not list the reasons behind shutting down its business in India. However, a report claims that the main reason behind Paypal’s decision was that the company failed to make inroads in India.
Whatever the reason may be, the news indeed comes as a surprise to everyone. It was only last year that the company asserted that it was building India’s payments service powered by India’s UPI railroad.
It further indicated that the company was expanding its investments in the Indian market. Moreover, PayPal had also partnered with a range of popular Indian businesses such as BookMyShow and MakeMyTrip, and the famous food delivering system Swiggy. But as of now, PayPal had removed any such references.
Indian mobile payments market is one of the richest ones globally. Credit Suisse had crunched the numbers and revealed that the Indian mobile payments market is estimated to reach $1 trillion by 2023.
Needless to say, there are several payments platform engaged in a vicious knot of trying to dominate the market. Paytm, PhonePe, Google, Amazon, and Facebook are just some of the companies competing against each other.
Several of these firms also offer a range of payment services for merchants.
PayPal had also mentioned that it has processed $1.4 billion worth of international sales for merchants in India last year.
They further added that it will continue to invest in “product development that enables Indian businesses to reach nearly 350 million PayPal consumers worldwide, increase their sales internationally and help the Indian economy return to growth.”
