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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."
Hopefully someone will implement ecash again, e.g. opencoin.org, and will provide some more interesting payment features for the users.
As someone who had the dubious task of integrating the Paypal payment mechanism into a custom checkout process, I welcome this new "Checkout by Amazon" with open arms.
Nobox: Only simple products.
Google doesn't have anything to sell, but not so for Amazon, it doesn't need eBay users to survive, Amazon has enough users to get this thing started.
Virtual Betting on Facebook for non-geeks.
In all fairness I don't think either (Google's or Amazon's) attempt was designed as a full blown competitor to paypal. Which is a shame.
I personally would want something like a cross between paypal and e-gold. Buyer beware (no freezing and locking accounts, which only effects legitimate sellers). But without the whole gold thing.
It's the age of e-commerce, why still can't I send money easily/cheaply?
Hopefully Amazon takes a lesson from Google. One of the problems with Google Checkout is that they don't allow subscriptions to be created. Google's transaction fees are lower than PayPal's, or my merchant account's, so I'd love to use them more heavily, but that's a major roadblock. I'm sure a lot of other small businesses are in the same situation.
I don't use eBay, don't want to use eBay, and frankly wish I could get Paypal to quit telling me about eBay. I still have little interest in Google Checkout. I suppose I might sign up for it some time, but it's not even the same kind of business. Paypal works like a checking account, I can paypal small amounts of money around to anyone else who has a paypal account, they don't have to be set up as an online merchant, they can just take my money and spend it themselves. It's pretty much the online equivalent of cash. If Google Checkout has any comparable capabilities they're sure hiding it... for the end user all they are is another merchant service like the one Yahoo runs, but one that's tied specifically to Gmail and the other Google services. I can maybe see some convenience there but it's nothing like Paypal.
Lets hope it means there's an Amazon auction site on the way too: ebay needs some proper competition.
While this sounds like a really great system, unless they slash the fee, there is no way it will ever be a Paypal killer, or even serious competitor. The secret behind Paypal has always been the low fee, which means huge volume. You can use it for almost any transaction, no matter the size. This system sounds great, but how many transactions large enough to make the $1.50 reasonable are actually going on over the net, especially when compared to the millions of small transactions just done by eBay?
As a buyer, I use Paypal a lot even for places that take credit cards just because it is convenient. I can just log into Paypal and send the money versus having to go and get my credit card to enter all of the information. The fee for me is nothing and the fee for the seller is small enough that they still use it. All of those type transaction dry up with this system unfortunately.
"Information wants to be expensive" - Stewart Brand, the same guy who said "Information wants to be free"
That's where a universal currency would help quite a bit. Perfect for small, growing businesses, faster/cheaper transactions for larger companies, and the public can only benefit...
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Not only that, but Amazon also provides a marketplace for its users too, which brings it into rather more direct competition with eBay. The only bit missing is the auction element - and thank heavens for that!