In direct competition to PayPal, Amazon has launched a new service today, aptly named “Amazon Payments.”
Operating from AmazonPayments.com the new service charges 2.9% from each transaction, plus 30 cents. Users can shop online, being able to both send and receive money to Amazon and thousands of other web sites.
By rolling out Amazon Payments, the online retail giant is going full force against eBay and its PayPal subsidiary.
Amazon has more than 244 million active customer accounts, thus presenting a substantial threat against PayPal.
Since the proverbial devil is in the details, it’d be interesting to know what the Amazon terms and conditions state, as far as domain sales are concerned.
For more information, head over to AmazonPayments.com.
Same commissions as Paypal! Looks like they are not trying very hard to compete
I´ll definitely consider using them i always hated not being able to pay with paypal on amazon.
I hope their site is faster. Paypal is so old, outdated, slow and confusing of a website. I would take the same rate if I could just get rid of the sluggishness and complexity that Paypal has!
Is that Britney Spears on the Amazon Payments homepage? 😀
http://i.imgur.com/tiLIrZy.jpg
Amazon tried to go up against Etsy in the same way in the art/craft market.
I don’t think it went over very well. In that case they were actually more expensive than Etsy so no big surprise.
I’ll second the comment about getting rid of the complexity with Paypal.
I also wonder how they’ll be about locking down your account. I’ve heard some horror stories about Paypal on this.
Unfortunately seems it is only available for United States to setup a business account, and I agree with Michael, same commissions as PayPal. I like Amazon, and look forward we can accept Amazon payments in the future, but meantime other platforms like FastSpring seems are more flexible to start accepting payments.
I had set up a business account through Paypal to potentially purchase Real Estate through eBay 2 years ago. Out of the blue a Paypal representative called me and started questioning me about what I was using the account for. When I said “to purchase real estate” on eBay she informed me that was against eBay policy and was something I could not do. I said fine,,,,cancel the account then. Instead of canceling the account they placed the account on “Limited Status” which prevented “ME” from canceling the account personally. So I called them multiple times attempting to close the account and they would not until recently after eBay announced they have been hacked. So the moral of the story is Paypal will go to extreme lengths to keep your bank account and contact information in their database without confirming they have closed the account. I would assume that’s because they hope you change your mind but now I will never use them again. Listen to THIS phone call from this guy trying to close HIS account…This is what you will go through trying to close an account on “limited status” with Paypal:
http://marc.perkel.com/2004/09/15/paypal-refuses-to-close-my-paypal-account/
Hi, AmazonPayments is not a new thing. It was there for at least 1 year before. Because I have amazon payment account with them which is like 1-2 years old.
Lakshan – As per the Amazon press release:
“The company launched a new service Monday allowing customers to automatically pay recurring charges, like monthly subscription fees or phone bills, using their Amazon log-in details. ”
So this is different, it’s a new service.