Bill Me Later, Amazon

Saul Hansell over a the NY Times writes how Bill Me Later has been accepted by Amazon. Apparently it took seven years and a chunk of equity to get them to adopt the payment system. Bill Me Later only exists because of the automated systems for approving credit and the distrust or unwillingness to use credit cards over the net. What I particularly like about Bill Me Later is the cheaper fees (1.5% vs 2%) than credit cards charge and the great fit it has for micro transactions.

A little late...

Amazon to rent its cash register.

Best news for merchants: more choice in processing payments. Google Checkout, Amazon and PayPal. How long will these three operate as payments processors before they realise they can cut out the credit card companies and offer end to end services?

The future looks good....

MS$

Rob Findlay over at the Bank channel points to a story on Microsoft's Zune points which have their own conversion rates to different currencies, effectively making it a currency of its own. So what? I'm very interested in what banking fundamentally is, what currencies are and are not and here is an example of how a firm can instigate a "value transfer system", which is really all a currency is, without fanfare. Now lets make a silly prediction: in five years time there will be three new virtual currencies: the Amazon Dollar, the Google Credit and the Microsoft Dollar. Each will be used across a number of service providers and linked into various banking and payment systems and will threaten the ability of central banks to control the supply of funds in their economy.

PayPal, Google Checkout and now... Amazon?

I'm probably a bit behind the times, but Amazon joins the fray!
http://paymentswatch.com/2007/08/07/amazon-flexible-payment-service/#more-49

https://payments.amazon.com/sdui/sdui/index.htm