Reliance Teams With Google, Facebook In Bid For Indian Digital Payments License

Reliance Industries, India’s largest company by market value, is looking to link up with Facebook and Google in a bid to get a digital payments license from the Reserve Bank of India to serve the country’s growing eCommerce market. The move would also include homegrown technology service provider Infibeam Avenues, Bloomberg reported.

The Reliance conglomerate is run by Mukesh Ambani, currently Asia’s wealthiest individual. Facebook and Google are among Reliance’s 13 international investors. According to Bloomberg sources, the four business partners are working on a detailed plan. The companies declined to comment.

Tufts University’s Fletcher School, in collaboration with Mastercard, released a report last month that assessed countries’ movement toward digital payments. India was fourth in “momentum” among 90 economies ranked at the end of last year. According to Fletcher’s Digital Evolution Scorecard, India takes its place among “break out economies,” which are “lower scoring in their present states of digitization” but changing quickly. The study added that such economies are “highly attractive to innovators and investors.”

Reliance’s Jio is a telecommunications company headquartered in Mumbai. It topped 405 million subscribers in the third quarter of last year. The startup, founded by Ambani, also saw a net increase in profits of 12.85 percent on a quarter-by-quarter basis.

Despite the pandemic, Jio was optimistic about its opportunities. “The company has evaluated the implications of the COVID-19 pandemic and has determined that there is no significant impact on its financial position and performance,” Jio said in a filing last fall.

Reliance Jio is a subsidiary of Jio Platforms, which is also the parent company of several tech companies.

Reliance’s interest in setting up an electronic payment platform shows that Ambani is serious about turning the conglomerate toward the consumer market of telecom, retail and eCommerce, said Bloomberg. Ambani’s vision landed $27 billion from global investors last year.