Amazon seeks startups in India; PayByCar combines gas and toll payments

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Startup play

Amazon has launched Global Selling Propel, a mentorship and accelerator for retail startups in India. It's part of a broader strategy at Amazon to expand relationships with local firms in India, giving a potential boost to Amazon's payments app and other services for online sellers.

Amazon will manage a mentorship board that includes Amazon executives, VCs and leaders from Startup India and Invest India, two organizations that aid technology development, reports Business Today in India. Through Amazon, the startups can reach markets in and outside India, as well as gain access to ordering, payment and fulfillment technology.

Amazon is in fierce competition with U.S. firms such as Walmart and Google to gain share of India's growing digital commerce market. Facebook is also a competitor, having invested $5.7 billion to acquire a portion of Reliance Industry's digital arm — giving Facebook access to e-commerce and digital marchants in India.

Bloomberg

Gas and tolls

PayByCar has extended its E-ZPass toll integration to a network of 30 gas stations in Massachusetts, enabling mobile payments for gas without using cash, a card or mobile app.

Drivers instead access toll technology, which recognizes the car, activates the pump remotely and sends the driver a text message. The driver responds with the pump number. The PayByCar app records the transaction and sends the driver an e-receipt.

The integration is a pandemic response, and also is designed to reduce the amount of time required for refueling by eliminating the need to use the pump's keypad and a payment card.

Your money's no good here

More than a third of U.K. consumers report being blocked from paying with cash since the pandemic began, according to consumer advocate Which?, contending the refusals include stores barring people trying to buy medicine, according to Finextra.

The refusals are partly due to concerns over handing cash, but also come as cash access becomes a hot political issue, as paper money's role in financial inclusion intersects with the cost of managing cash for banks and retailers.

Several local jurisdictions in the U.S. have passed laws requiring stores to accept cash. That caused the cashierless Amazon Go stores to add a cash option.

Higher limits

Spark Capital, actor Jared Leto and Affirm CEO and PayPal founder Max Levchin are part of a $12 million funding round in X1, a startup that uses future income to set boost limits for its stainless steel card.

X1 also supports single-click subscription management, instant notifications on refunds, and creates virtual cards for a single payment. X1 says it has signed up 300,000 people since September for its waitlist.

Spark also participated in Rapyd's recent $300 million funding round, while Levchin's Affirm went public in July following a year of rapid growth for the entire point of sale credit sector.

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