PayPal says halting online payment services within India

New Delhi - Online payments giant PayPal said Friday it will halt domestic financial transactions within India, bowing out of a vast market buoyed by recent coronavirus restrictions.

Multinational giants, including WhatsApp, Google and Alibaba, have for months been locked in a tense battle over the fast-growing digital payments market in the nation of 1.3 billion, expected to be worth 500 billion dollars by 2025.But PayPal on Friday said it would instead focus on developing more international sales for Indian businesses from April.

"This means we will no longer offer domestic payment services within India from 1 April," the California-based company added in a statement. The firm did not say why it was ending its online payments service, available on a number of popular Indian apps.

PayPal said it processed 1.4 billion dollars worth of international sales for over 360,000 merchants in India last year.