Amazon pay are vying to take PayPal’s crown as preferred paying option for millions
Amazon patented the one click payment option back in (date) and held that patent for several years which closed a huge section of the market off and stifled innovation in the field.
When one click payment patent expired and this opened the flood gates to other companies to offer super fast checkout solutions. Fast checkout solutions are driven by holding pre-defined payment details of a customer which often includes personal information, shipping information and credit card or bank details. PayPal have done extremely well at capturing a payment solution which stores this payment information and enable users to pay securely on a range of sites, you can find PayPal literally everywhere and it’s especially popular in counties like the US and Germany,
Amazon customers have long stored their shipping and payment information inside their Amazon accounts making it easy for customers to check out in the Amazon app or online. The data is safely stored on Amazon and occasionally Amazon will prompt a user to update their credit card or bank information when it expires, and users can save multiple cards and addresses into their account (from personal experience my amazon has too many stored addresses).
More recently Amazon have opened up their payment facility to be used externally on other shopping sites through an api / extension. You may find Apple Pay buttons on shopping sites you visit however it’s unlikely you will find it on a Shopify site as Shopify push their own PayApp. Amazon pay uses the same principle as PayPal where you click on a button, log into Amazon pay, the transaction is made and then you return to the site. Simple. A customer may be frustrated if they forget their log in details or their details have expired… so it’s a good experience but not bullet proof compared to solutions offered by Apple Pay and GPay (incidentally I ALWAYS forget my Amazon password as I’ve changed it so many times when it often asks me to log into my Amazon devices).
Because this payment flow is identical to PayPal it means Amazon will be directly competing with PayPal and Shopify’s ShopApp to be a preferred solution among customers. Amazon will also be able to Harvest huge amount of data on buying behaviour outside of Amazon.
The space is really hotting up with so many providers out there and everyone vying for customer attention and more availability on e-commerce sites. In years to come there is likely to be some consolidation of payment solutions, but for now it’s going to be fun to watch the fight and the race!
Check out more on Amazon news here with an speaking about amazons partnership with Affirm, a buy now pay later solution, or you might like my article on preferred payment options in different countries.
