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Amazon Launches Subscription-Based Billing And Payments Service
mpicpp (3454017) writes in with news about Amazon's new payments service. "The company launched a service Monday known as Amazon Payments that allows consumers to use their Amazon accounts to send and receive money and shop online at 'thousands of sites other than Amazon.' It's accessible on both desktops and mobile devices. For businesses, Amazon is selling the service as a way to take advantage of its security and user data while saving time for new customers. There's no recurring fee for retailers to use the platform, though Amazon plans to take a standard cut of 2.9% from those businesses, plus $0.30 for each transaction of $10 or more. With more than 244 million active customer accounts, Amazon already has a massive base of potential users for the service. The effort represents a new front in its assault on eBay, which owns online payments service PayPal."
eBay is going to sue the shit out of Amazon for any and every little detail they can dream up, and it will be a gargantuan fight of epic proportions that ends up costing consumers billions in added costs to products and services.
Amazon payments launched in 2007. I've had an account with the service for at least 5 years.
It seems to me that 3% overhead imposed on most of the retail economy is hugely inefficient. Why aren't payment vendors undercutting each-other on these fees?
It'll be nice to have another viable competitor to PayPal.
Paypal is basically a monopoly in online payment systems. A few competitors could do the people good. I didn't expect Amazon to poke into it. I always thought a company with virtual goods like Facebook.com or Blizzard would go,"Hey, we'll let sites outside us deal in our virtual goods."
God spoke to me
>2.9% + $0.3
Nothing to see here. Until someone starts offering a flat fee for payment processing somewhere close to cost of the transaction, which is microscopic, this is offering nothing that can't be done with existing credit card processing options.
I should use this sig to advertise my book ISBN-13 : 978-1501515132.
Because Visa and MasterCard have what amounts to a cozy duopoly on setting the swipe fees
If small sellers have an alternative to the abysmal conflict resolution Paypal offers, this can only be a good thing. Amazon does Customer Service well... I think they can certainly improve upon Paypal in that respect. Competition may drive Paypal to improve.
"I will trust Google to 'do no evil' until the founders no longer run it." Hello Alphabet.
There's two reasons
first Visa and MC both require merchants not to charge extra fro using their card. Thus there's no reason for consumers not to use the most widely accepted cards.
second, even though Visa is a franchise of issuers, the master company avoids putting them in competition.
Thus there's just no easy way for competition to breakout since merchants don't want to just restrict their sales to AMEX holders anymore.
It's also likely it's an illegal price fixed cartel but I don't have any evidence for that.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
I was under the impression that Google Wallet for physical goods required the merchant to already have a merchant account with a non-Google payment processor. See "keep your existing payment processor" on this page.
Clarification: Amazon's payment system is not new; Monday's launch relates specifically to payments of recurring charges.
option. Pay Pal is it then once again.
by TheSpoom (715771) Uncaring Linux user here. I have nothing to add to this but please continue. *munches popcorn*
I log in to my Amazon Payments account and I still don't see any recurring nor scheduled payments options. Is this on a rolling deployment where some users get it before others?
Which one is cheaper? Which one has better dispute resolution procedures?
Serious question. Seemingly none of the big players in the whatever-this-service-is-called industry seem to want anything to do with porn. I would LOVE to use a reputable mainstream payment services provider to buy porn but they're all so sexually repressed that they just shut down any accounts dealing with anything sexual.
I've developed payment interfaces for PayPal, Google Checkout (may it RIP), and Amazon Payments.
Amazon Payments is by far the most sloppy interface I've used. Embarrassingly bad.
1. There's no way to search transactions on their web interface by email, only transaction id.
2. You can't use the "monthly statement" to reconcile because the "beginning balance" is at the *END* of day 1, not the beginning! (opening balance doesn't match previous monthly closing balance)
3. The math in a transaction report never adds up (opening + Payments - Fees - withdrawals=balance) because (I assume) factional fees aren't reported and always seem to round in amazon's favor.
4. Support is only available through their forums, and answers are slow coming if at all. (hint.. if you're going to use a forum for support, unanswered issues from years ago makes you look worse!)
I still offer it because the code is done and it is functional.... still annoying though.
--- If it's worth doing, it's worth doing in Perl!
If you're a small shop, you will not be able to deal with credit cards except through intermediate handlers, such as PayPal. And most of them have massive up-front fees that you cannot afford.
Well, technically, I suppose that statement may still be true, but there is at least one very prominent "intermediate handler" that does not charge any up-front fees; in fact, they give away the hardware for free: I'm talking about Square.
They are, however, mainly helpful offline, because I believe their fees for non-in-person transactions are considerably higher than the 2.7% or whatever they charge when you actually swipe a card. Though they do have an online marketplace.
Either way, it's definitely good to see a serious (potential) competitor to PayPal.
Dan Aris
Fun. Free. Online. RPG. BattleMaster.