August 08 2007

Amazon to launch payment rival

Amazon has rolled out a beta of a 3rd party payments system along the lines of PayPal and Google Checkout. It also enables peer-to-peer transfers so that amazon.com members can move money amongst themselves.

The Amazon Flexible Payments Service provides developers with a rule-based processing model with the Gatekeeper system cross-checking payment instructions to validate transactions.

According to the Amazon Web Services blog, this will enable one-off or recurring transactions, transactions limited by date, by amount or by a list of authorised senders or recipients. A number of small, micro-payments can be aggregated into one "reasonable size" payment. All transactions have to be made in US dollars.

Amazon already holds card details for a lot of people who shop online so has the advantage over Google of already being trusted in the payments arena, but whether retailers will want to share any transactional information with Amazon is another matter.

Would anyone like to comment ...

Emma Herrod