India’s booming digital payments sector has become a battleground between Chinese and American investors, but the market is likely to consolidate as a few winners emerge, according to Nandan Nilekani, co-founder of Indian tech giant Infosys and head of a government drive to boost online transactions.
Investors from China and the US have poured money into the nascent industry, with Alibaba-backed Paytm going up against Walmart-owned PhonePe, and Google, Amazon and WhatsApp all in various stages of rolling out their own platforms. Other start-ups including Truecaller, Razorpay and BharatPe are also competing for a slice.
US and Chinese investors have doubled down on India’s fast-growing technology sector after being largely unable to enter each other’s markets, a stalemate that has intensified due to the trade war between Washington and Beijing.