Amazon Launches Payment Service... Again
from the let's-try-this-again dept
As was widely expected, Amazon has now launched a new payment service for online retailers as something of a PayPal competitor. Basically, it will let people use their Amazon account info to buy things at other stores. Of course, as others have discovered, taking on PayPal -- while simple in concept -- has proven a lot more difficult in practice. Companies like Google and Yahoo have tried and haven't made much of a dent. Hell, even Amazon has tried this before, though that was a beta launch that never went very far. Actually getting retailers to implement this and then getting customers to use it is the challenge at this point, and it seems likely to be an uphill battle. There's definitely a sense that many people don't like PayPal, but it's so well established that to provide an alternative, you really need to offer something that provides significant value above and beyond Paypal -- and it's not clear that Amazon really does that.
Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.
While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.
–The Techdirt Team
Filed Under: online payments, payments, paypal
Companies: amazon, ebay
Reader Comments
Subscribe: RSS
View by: Time | Thread
Better timing for Amazon.
But what you may not have heard is eBay's going into the online store direction. More and more, listings aren't about auctions, but about fixed-priced listings.
With their Paypal backing, many feel trapped there are no alternatives while eBay makes these changes.
Amazon's probably taken a good look at all this and have decided to try again because, as they see it, it's probably great timing for them. Many sellers have left eBay due to the recent changes and every day, eBay starts to look and act like Amazon.
Personally, I'll back Amazon before I'll back eBay. As with most websites which get too big for their britches, it ends up falling apart due to very bad management decisions.
I don't see eBay around in 5 years unless they do something because there's no way eBay can compete with Amazon's low prices and free shipping (on orders over $25).
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
Have you used it before? PayPal's model is grossly incompetent. Their level of service is almost non-existent. I've dealt with them as an average Joe buying products through PayPal, in which they have (numerous times) told the merchant to ship my things to a 6 year old address without ever prompting me.
I've also dealt with them as a merchant implementing their payment gateway API, where I've had to email them with critical questions such as "Why do my payment request keep timing out at 10PM - 10:30?". I email them because eBay and friends adopt the "Don't call us, and we won't call you" model of customer service... they don't want your lip, just your money. Anyhow, it took weeks -- yes, weeks -- for them to get back to me and apologize for how overwhelmed they'd been with email lately (?) and that's why the response took so long.
Bottom line, PayPal has a monopoly but there is plenty of room for improvement and it would be delightful to see them struggling to do something about it if they were threatened.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: your comment
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Way To Go Amazon!!!
Paypal is a HUGE RIP-OFF and is owned by ebay. ebay/paypal is embroiled in an onslot of legal suits against them, undergoing an enormous amount of bad media coverage, giving their call center work to the Philippines, while being scrutinized concerning the way they calculate sell through rates, being watched with suspicion because of their ties to counterfeit items and Liquidity Services, while contending with major backlashes from users around the world as a result of numerous mis-steps and detrimental policy changes, while their executives shuffle their own personal ebay inc. stocks during a company buy back, while experiencing severely damaged reputations due to their defeated plan to force all Australians to accept only Paypal, in the midst of tanking stocks and an ongoing global boycott, all under the direction of a new coporate venturalist CEO with transparent visions of squashing it’s core auction base in
exchange for an already saturated market of a new venue of fixed price items.
GLOBALLY BOYCOTTING EBAY with members from
France
Singapore
Spain
Belgium
Italy
Germany
U.K.
Canada
Australia
US
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
PayPal Sucks
I have really liked Amazon.com, but they seem intent on going the way of E-Bay and making "bad" business decisions to "foster" growth. While making money is fundamental to capitalism, I am consistently dismayed when companies get gimmicky to raise profit levels. I would like to see Amazon.com return to a "simple" business plan.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: PayPal Sucks
If Amazon can provide that same service cheaper, simpler, and better, I'd be willing to switch.
It's not a gimmick; credit card clearing is expensive.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
PayPal Sucks?
Because what got PayPal up and running and grew it to become the behemoth that it has become is that the average Dick and Jane didn't have a clue how to accept payments from Discover, VIsa, and Amex. To do all of those you had to sign up for merchant accounts with a bank, not a simple process, and most banks won't give merchant accounts to individuals.
What PayPal did was to provide an EASY way for Jane and Dick to accept payments for their goods and services electronically by making it an easy and guaranteed transaction for both the buyer and the seller.
No bad checks to worry about, no merchant accounts, no giant hurdles between you and the person on the other end of your transaction.
They became successful by doing what most successful tech companies have done: Fill a need, fill it well, be the first to do it or come in early and be the best to do it.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: PayPal Sucks?
Also, Amazon.com seems to have "resolved" the ability of Jane and Dick to get paid. Based on a recent credit purchase that I made at Amazon.com they somehow "forward" the credit payment to the small merchant. E-bay could have implemented the same the same type of payment strategy. Unfortunately, it appears that Amazon.com seeks to emulate E-Bay's bad business model. For everyone's "protection" E-Bay could sue Amazon.com for "stealing" their business model. Maybe that will deter Amazon.com from going down this ridiculous road.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Sounds like an extended Amazon MarketPlace
I really like Amazon as a business. They have some very clever ways of getting me to spend more money (e.g. "Other people who bought this book, also bought ..."). It's not difficult to see how non-Amazon retailers could benefit from this approach, such as when I buy a book from Amazon it tells me about a related product sold elsewhere.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
What's needed...
We have that in bricks-and-mortar stores, where they all take cash and they all take credit and debit cards using the standard number system for these.
The online equivalent would need to include cryptographic handshakes, and vendors would need to be able to blacklist particular payment providers so they'd have recourse if one cheated them.
Once such a standard was in place, payment providers could compete freely for customers without having the barrier to entry of "getting on enough merchants' web sites". Paypal would be forced to improve or die, in particular.
Merchants probably get the screws from the likes of Paypal too, so merchants have an incentive to band together and create such a standard and use collective bargaining power to force Paypal to use it. (Or even not; they could offer this interface to would-be Paypal competitors and separately offer Paypal payment for so long as it remained in widespread use, using whatever separate interface.)
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Amazon FPS
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
eBay/Paypal are history!
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]