
Amazon WebPay takes on paypal. - chanux
https://payments.amazon.com/sdui/sdui/personal/money
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nopal
Unfortunately, all users have to have an Amazon account to make a payment
through WebPay.

With PayPal's API, a site can keep the user on the site for the entire payment
process, performing the purchase via a Web service call.

What alternative services are there to PayPal that offer the ability to act
only as payment processors that get called via an API?

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papachito
Yes there is <http://www.chargify.com/>

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jhancock
Chargify has yet to send me an email for their beta (which I've signed up for
several times). They don't even bother to send an email acknowledging my
interest. Its a great looking website and an interesting value proposition.
When it gets ready for prime time, I'll try it if I haven't already moved on
to a solution thats actually available.

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acangiano
It's US only for now. One of PayPal's strengths is its international nature.

~~~
petercooper
Amazon has a bad track record for international deployment of anything
relating to billing. Amazon Flexible Payments Service has been around ages and
is still US only. Their Honor System didn't make it out of the US either.

PayPal has its issues but they've always been useful for the large
international diaspora of US dealing but non-US dwelling wannabe Americans..
:-)

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davidw
I'm not particularly enamored of Amazon's international deployment for
anything. In Europe, for instance, they only have stores for Germany, France,
and the UK, and each of those sites is available only in that language. So if
you're elsewhere, say Spain, or Italy or Slovenia or something, I guess you
just try and get by with whatever language you know, which is most likely
English. But there's something lame about them not just simply shipping from
the place most likely to get you your products in a timely manner, as they do
in the US. In other words... what they have works, it's just fiddly and not
very pleasant to use.

OTOH, as a company they seem a lot less evil than Paypal, so I'll be rooting
for them.

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pbhjpbhj
They also split affiliate programs so that I can't include links for UK and US
folk, say, that will simply take them to the most appropriate store I have to
provide 2 links or do acrobatics sniffing IPs and whatnot.

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sjunkin
about time, that space could use some competition and amazon has been
executing well. I really look forward to this

~~~
city41
Not only that but Amazon is uniquely positioned to actually give PayPal a run
for its money. I look forward to seeing how this plays out.

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patio11
My perpetual problem with Amazon payments is that, unlike Paypal, they don't
have ubiquity among my customers and, unlike Google Checkout, they can't bribe
me with favorable treatment on the search page to make me put up with non-
ubiquity.

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rgrieselhuber
Is there favorable treatment from an SEO perspective if you use Google
Checkout?

~~~
qeorge
No, but they show an icon in AdWords and Google Products One Box results next
to stores that take Checkout. Any trust indicator like that usually helps.

It may increase your chances of appearing in the One Box as well (as opposed
to simply determining whether you get an icon next to your name), but I
haven't heard that definitively.

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there
from the faq: (<https://payments.amazon.com/sdui/sdui/personal/webpay/faq>)

    
    
         5. Is there a fee for using Amazon WebPay?
             No, there is no charge to send money using Amazon WebPay.
    

i'm assuming that's just for purchases. how much are the fees to receive
money?

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ccorda
I don't see any fees.

Amazon would "make money" with access to interest free funds (money sitting in
accounts), and by having more people pay for purchases via ACH, saving on
credit cards fees.

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blasdel
Paypal tried making money on the float, but it didn't work. Amazon has a
somewhat better chance of pulling that off since they don't have to ignite a
fraud clusterfuck by giving out cash to get users like Paypal did. More
importantly, their users have much less incentive to cashout since they know
that _the store of all stores_ will take it.

But the interest they could make on the float is nothing compared to the
tithes they pay to the credit card companies, especially with the damn rewards
cards. Just getting their prime customers to sign up for EFT, for normal
Amazon purchases, has got to be worth a fuckton of money to them.

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blasdel
Ha, I can't add my checking account because I don't have State-issued ID, just
a US Passport.

Cashiers _just love_ hunting for a birthdate on a passport when I buy beer,
but I haven't been needing to do that lately since I've started getting my
beer _delivered to my door_ , ironically enough by Amazon Fresh, and they
don't check ID (though they won't leave it on your doorstep).

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nhebb
I think this is just for personal use. If you want to use Amazon as a payment
processor through your website, you probably need to use a business-class
service like the Amazon Flexible Payments Service listed here:
<https://payments.amazon.com/sdui/sdui/business>

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smcnally
how's it deal with ~$.99 purchases?

are their fees comparable to paypal's for a couple thousand / month in
transactions?

other than competition in the space - which, agreed, is a Good Thing - why
would i use this as a 1) merchant or 2) consumer over paypal?

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chrischen
You can already use Amazon FPS with micropayments. I believe under the
micropayments fee structure a $0.99 purchase would result in $0.10 transaction
fee.

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pkrumins
Knowing how great Amazon customer service it, it has to be amazing!

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moon_of_moon
bravo.

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visakhcr
It's Amazon's take on Ebay also

