Amritsar, NFAPost: In a direct competition to Paytm, PhonePe, Mobikwik, ET Money and Google Pay’s digital gold services, e-commerce giant Amazon has launched a virtual gold buying and selling option named ‘Gold Vault’.
Amazon has partnered with Safegold as the partner-seller. Safegold, primarily owned by Invent Advisors Ltd, has World Gold (India) Ltd, as well as various other investor funds as minority stakeholders.
Users can access this new option under the Insurance category of Amazon Pay on the main app, and can buy and sell the virtual gold-stock any time at the latest price.
Amazon claims that the gold price gets refreshed every five minutes so that users can avail the latest price.
Gold purchases can be made in multiple transactions of any denomination and can be accumulated over a long period. According to Amazon the virtual gold buying feature offers 24 Karat Gold of 995 purity.
The company also said that every purchase made is placed in a secure vault backed by the government regulated security trustee, and a user can redeem the value of gold purchased at any time into their respective bank account.
The buy and sell price, however, will have a difference due to a 3% GST and costs such as bank charges, payment costs, technology costs and hedging costs that Safegold undertakes, Amazon said.
On Amazon’s Gold Vault, a user can buy gold as low as 1 rupee or 2 gm, but EMI option is not made available since regulations do not allow it for buying gold. Users cannot use Amazon Pay to buy virtual gold, but can use debit card, credit card, net banking and UPI.
