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 by 2025.

But PayPal on Friday said it would instead focus on developing more international sales for Indian businesses from April.
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“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 worth of international sales for over 360,000 merchants in India last year.

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