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This has given its buy button wide reach: In 2016, Amazon reported that 33 million people in 170 countries used Amazon Pay to make a purchase.

And as one of the biggest online retailers in the world, Amazon pays billions of dollars’ worth of fees each year. What this means: Amazon is likely using its co-brand card portfolio to pressure Visa into negotiating better fee terms.

Amazon has offered a proprietary BNPL option, Amazon Pay Later, for customers in India since April 2020, and it’s been widely successful: As of July 2021, Amazon Pay Later had amassed 2 million users and processed more than 10 million transactions.

Crypto acceptance can also be embedded into Amazon Pay, Amazon’s buy button that's open to third-party merchants—making the solution even more attractive. The etailer might also consider developing its own cryptocurrency. Should Amazon decide to introduce cryptocurrencies as a payment method, it’s possible a proprietary crypto launch could follow close behind.

The success of Amazon Pay Later in India might push the etailer to expand the installment lending service into other countries, including the US, where the number of BNPL users is expected to climb 17.9% year over year to hit 45.1 million in 2021, according to our forecasts.

Partnering with Amazon would be a boon for providers given its size, but if Amazon elects to add a BNPL solution through Amazon Pay, it could start racking up payments volume on its own site and try to bring its option to other merchants, like it’s done with its digital wallet.

Business Insider Intelligence research analyst Daniel Keyes, eMarketer principal analyst Andrew Lipsman and senior forecasting analyst at Insider Intelligence Cindy Liu try their hands at playing a special, Amazon-themed game of "What's the Point?" where they discuss how the US House antitrust report affects Amazon, luxury brands on the platform, palm-print payment, all the new details about Prime Day 2020, and more.

Amazon Pay and Google Pay were also used by roughly half of respondents, while PhonePe and PayPal were used by about four in 10 each. (The survey didn’t specify how those respondents were using the apps, however.). But Paytm is about to get a new competitor: WhatsApp.