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Amazon Payments

Type	Subsidiary of Amazon.com
Headquarters	Seattle, Washington USA
Parent	Amazon.com
Website	payments.amazon.com
Registration	Free
Available in	English
Current status	active

Amazon Payments, Inc. is a wholly owned subsidiary of Amazon.com ^[1] that provides a safe means to process transactions online. Launched in 2006, Amazon Payments leverages the massive consumer base of Amazon.com and focuses on giving users the same secure and trusted checkout experience available on Amazon.com.

Amazon Payments has several products for consumers, businesses, and developers.

Consumers

Online purchases

Amazon Payments is a simple and trusted way for customeres to purchase goods and services at websites across the internet using the payment methods in their Amazon.com accounts, such as their Visa or MasterCard. (Currently Amazon.com and Amazon Payments will not accept payment methods such as PayPal or Google Checkout.) At participating vendors, which include Patagonia and Jockey, users can check out using their Amazon account information without needing to re-enter credit card numbers or shipping addresses. Users can also check out with Amazon's 1 Click.

Other consumer products

• Amazon TextBuyIt is an SMS-based service which allows users to find items, check prices, or purchase items simply by sending a text message to "262966" (AMAZON). Users can also text searches to "262966" and receive search results and prices quickly.

• Amazon WebPay is a free service to send or receive money using an e-mail address or mobile telephone number.

• Amazon TextPayMe is a service similar to WebPay, except users can use SMS messages to complete the transaction. The premise behind the service was to allow users to pay each other instantly and securely, without having to carry change or remember IOUs.

Businesses

Checkout by Amazon

Checkout by Amazon (CBA) is a complete e-commerce solution that allows web merchants to accept Amazon account information and use Amazon for payment processing. CBA can manage several aspects of the transaction including order processing, promotional discounts, shipping rates, sales tax calculation, and up-selling. Depending upon the needs of the merchant, CBA can be integrated into the merchant's systems with manual processing (through Seller Central) or through SOAP APIs or downloadable CSV files. CBA also claims to reduce bad debt because of Amazon's advanced fraud detection capabilities.

Amazon Simple Pay

Amazon Simple Pay (ASP) is a set of payment-only products that allows web merchants to accept Amazon account information and use Amazon for payment-only processing. ASP differs from CBA in that ASP does not handle additional capabilities associated with order processing such as promotions, tax & shipping, and so on.

Amazon PayPhrase

Amazon PayPhrase is a recent (November 2009) addition to Amazon Payments which allows customers to check out by simply typing their PayPhrase and their PIN without having to enter any shipping or credit card information. As of now, this is accepted at Amazon.com as well as at certain retailers, including Buy.com and J&R Music and Computers. PayPhrase's claim of being additionally secure is controversial.

Developers

Flexible Payments Service

Flexible Payments Service (FPS), part of Amazon Web Services, enables developers to use Amazon's scalable payment infrastructure to accept payments using the customer's Amazon account information. FPS includes several lightweight APIs that are designed to enable developers to get up and running quickly and easily.

References

External links

• Official website
• Everyone Send Me $5 TechCrunch, February 15, 2006.