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Amazon Payment Systems Take On PayPal
Bridger writes "Amazon has introduced two new payment systems for merchants and consumers, which brings it into a market dominated by PayPal. Google introduced a similar system for merchants and consumers in 2006, also called Checkout, but it has not found favor with online retailers. Auction giant eBay, which owns PayPal, has prevented consumers from using the Google system."
It has a lot of advantage when dealing with people you don't want to provide any permanent credentials, such as when buying something from an unknown individual or donating money to some organization, group, or charity.
Visa, at least, and probably the other cards by now, have a system where you can generate a single use credit card number pre authorized for specific merchant and dollar amount. So you can use that numbe in an online transaction and the merchant gets a number that's only valid for that single use single dollar amount. If it gets stolen, no big deal. If the merchant tries to double bill it, no dice. etc etc. And I trust Visa a lot more than Paypal.
I don't hate paypal, but I do dislike using it given all the limitations, fees, and scams. I also despise the ebay/paypal pairing.
As for egold... yeah total scam... it had potential...maybe something like it still does.
But I think the real juggernauts -- the banks -- still have to weigh in on this.
My bank recently introduced "Interac Email Money Transfer" and its pretty freaking impressive. I can send money to nearly anyone in Canada with a Canadian bank account, and an email address. We don't need to share bank information or personal information at all. All I need to know as the sender is the recipients email address -- any email address, they can even use a throw-away one as long as they can pick up email on it, and I don't need to know what bank they belong to as long as its participating in the Interac Email system which is currently the 5 major Canadian banks (TD, RBC, Scotia, CIBC, and BMO).
The price is a flat $1.50 per transaction, which is pretty steep to pay for a $10.00 ebay win... but a drop in the bucket when paying for a $500 transaction. There is no fee to receive money.
If they don't use one of the 5 participating banks, but have an account at, for example, a credit union, they can -still- receive money, but I think it gets redirected through a more complicated and time consuming inter-bank transfer, and there is a fee charged to the recipient.
For me this is the paypal killer. Not only is it secure convenient and trustworthy but banks and credit unions, at least in Canada are pretty customer service oriented...toll free 24-hour hot-lines, and genuinely useful staff are the norm in my experience with TD, RBC, and Scotiabank. Contrast that with Paypal. :)
Already for me, anything significant is now done via this interac system when I can. Once it expands to the credit unions and/or goes international... I think paypal and its cohorts will be reduced to competing for petty cash transactions and micropayments, e.g. sending sums like... $1 or $5, where the $1.50 fee is just too much.
but I wouldn't be surprised to see the interac system evolve and start offering 'plans' in addition to the a la cart flat fee.
For details check it out...
http://www.interac.ca/consumers/productsandservices_ol_emt.php ... not sure if something like this is in the states yet...