Amazon vs PayPal: Retailer Beefs Up Online Payment Service
From The Motley Fool:
For years eBay’s PayPal service has offered an alternative to directly sharing credit card info as a way for people to pay for online purchases.
What perhaps fewer people know is that Amazon has offered a similar service that lets users pay through their account with the online retailer on thousands of partner sites. The “Pay with Amazon” button may not be as ubiquitous as the “Check out with PayPal” one, but Amazon has slowly been growing its online payment business. As of next Monday, the online retailer will be stepping up the competition as it starts managing subscription payments for start-ups and other companies.
. . . .
This expanded payment service is another assault on PayPal and an attempt by Amazon to leverage the 244 million active users whose credit card information the online giant has on file. The payment system — much like PayPal’s — lets users check out and pay using their Amazon credentials on partner sites. This gives people peace of mind and keeps them from having to enter credit card info on an unfamiliar site. Even on trustworthy websites paying with Amazon or PayPal is convenient it avoids having to create log-ins and enter credit card data for online retailers they might only visit once.
. . . .
While PayPal dwarfs Amazon as a payment system Amazon has many more registered users. PayPal only has 110 million users to Amazon’s 240 million. Of course, PayPal’s entire reason for existing is processing payments and the company has become the online standard for this type of third-party financial transaction. Both brands are heavily trusted and most customers of either would find a “Pay with Amazon” or “Check out with PayPal” button a reassuring choice on an unfamiliar website.
Link to the rest at The Motley Fool
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I trust Amazon.
I don’t trust PayPal all that much.
Same here.
Totally agree, Barbara! PayPal is a necessary evil I only deal with because I use Smashwords. After PayPal’s cute stunt concerning erotica books where the Visa and Mastercard companies called them out for lying, I don’t trust them a bit!
As far as I can tell, Mastercard was lying about that. They claimed it wasn’t against TOS, and that they’d never prevent their customers from buying legal stuff.
Yet Mastercard’s Merchant guidelines specifically refer to the sort of stuff Paypal was complaining about as being a violation. It would reflect badly on Mastercard to be associated with that.
Stripe–a porn oriented payment provider– has also demanded a similar purge at Mastercard’s behest. It was against one of the smaller online bookstores. Nobody noticed.
I have used the Amazon payments for things, but I use Paypal more often as that is an option in more places. I totally want Amazon to be ubiquitious, because I get 3x points for using my Amazon Visa and zip points for using Paypal through my checking account. I want the points.
I’ve only used PayPal when I absolutely had to. I’ve always liked that Kickstarter lets you use Amazon instead of PayPal. I hope other people start doing that, too.
I love that one pays for Kickstarter campaigns through Amazon. I’ve supported several campaigns, and one of the big reasons is how easy it is to pay through my Amazon account. If they had used PayPal, I doubt I would have supported any of these campaigns. I just don’t like PayPal.
I hate the way Paypal is always trying to winkle more personal and banking information out of users. I’ll use a trustworthy alternative to their snoopy ways.
I’ve used PayPal for years and haven’t had a problem with them. But I don’t mind the competition, either.
I agree to both points.
I had a PayPal account for a couple years several years back. I closed it after I kept getting double and triple billed for items and services bought with it. And then I had to get the credit card company after PayPal as I kept getting billed through the CC after the account was closed for things previously purchased and already paid for. I know people who have had worse problems than I with PayPal. I don’t use them at all.
I have not signed up with Amazon’s competing service yet but probably will, though not until I need it for something. I just haven’t needed it yet.
JEH
I participate in an art hobby that relies a lot on buying and selling items from all around the country and the world. I’ve been a long-time PayPal user, doing thousands of transactions over the 15 or so years I’ve been participating. The hobby adopted PayPal from its earliest days since it was a very convenient way to manage transactions across currencies, and since you could get a refund quickly and easily if your items failed to show up.
I also buy and sell heavily on Ebay. Between that and my hobby, I’d estimate that I do anywhere from a dozen to fifty or sixty transactions via PayPal monthly, and have done so ever since PayPal started up.
I’ve never had a problem with PayPal. They’ve always been great to me.
However, even I, longterm user that I am, can see myself switching over to Amazon, just for the added layer of convenience. Hmmm.
Someone charged $1700 to my PayPal account. They made good in 4 days but still it was not a pleasant experience.
This is a good move for Amazon. It’s a way to cash in on the fact that they have a good reputation and I think there’s definitely a need for this. I’ve wanted to buy from certain websites online, but since they were smaller vendors I just didn’t think it was a good idea to go spreading my card info around like that. So having Amazon’s backing would definitely make me feel more comfortable shopping online.
The only thing that kind of concerns me about this move is that Amazon is also a data company. I do wonder how they’re using all this information they have on their customers. They seem to being looking to monetize every single thing they can and that makes me a little uneasy. I don’t put it past them to sell the information about my purchases online, if they’re not already doing it (and I’m thinking they already are). My other concern is…what business is Amazon *not* going to be in? Are they going to spread themselves a little too thin trying to be everything to everyone?
Pay Pal lies about its intentions.
Did you ever get email after email
saying you needed to “verify” your account
by providing a checking account
or debit card authorization.
One time their blurb to me read:
“The Merchants you deal with will be much more
confident in their transactions with you.”
Yeah, right.
I am sure that somewhere in the Very FINE print
is verbage that in the instance where your credit card
bounced a transaction that PayShitty could then
debit your checking account.
PayPal told their mechants this — I know of one who took two weeks and many contacts on my part — to admit that PayPal could not require I route through them
and would afford his customers direct payment from
my cards/bank.
I could understand the merchant’s position.
I could not then and will not now bow to misrepresentation.
I like PayPal. And I like Amazon. Competition is good.
I wonder if this is why my mysterious payment limits disappeared from my PayPal account a while ago? I was about to have to find another way to pay for things, because PayPal was refusing to let me use them for more than another $1,000 or so if I didn’t give them bank details.
I’ve used PayPal since my Ebay days. Done thousands and thousands of transactions with them. It’s the payment method on my website.
That said, I auto transfer my PP balance to my bank every night and if I ever have more than $400 or so in my PP account I transfer it right away.
I’ve heard way too many stories about people having negative experiences to leave any money in my PP account.
Twice I’ve applied to PP to have the sort of account that allows people to put their cc number in on my check out rather than just use the PP site to check out.
This would let me take cc numbers over the phone, etc.
Despite a LOT of $$$ in completed transactions with no issues, PP says I’m in a “high risk for charge back” field (I think they lump me in with psychics who charge by the minute) and won’t approve me for the other type of account.
I’m grateful for PP yet feel no warm fuzzies for them.
I hope my shopping cart system adds Amazon as a payment option and that I can easily sort out how to activate it. I would love to offer two payment options on my site.
Have you considered square.com? I use that for daycare clients to pay, and they’ve been expanding their services.
Melanie, thanks for that information. Do they work internationally? I use PayPal to bill people all over the world for my coaching services.
Sorry to go so far off topic. I’d love to use Amazon for that kind of billing, so I will explore.
I don’t trust PayPal at all. I will be happy when more merchants adopt Amazon’s merchant payment system.
There are whole websites dedicated to how paypal has ripped off people with real stories presented by people from all over the world. Paypal has had several lawsuits against them. Also, Paypal likes to use your paypal account money as ‘float’, since they are not a bank and thus they can and do freeze your money if its over a certain amount and they need to make use of it. After 144 days or so they are supposed to release it. There are stories where they do not release it in whole or in part (unless lawyers get involved) and stories where they try to take money from the bank account you have added into your paypal account.
If you use paypal make sure you set up an account that is only used to receive paypal funds. Then when you get the funds into that account from your paypal account quickly transfer them to another account at your bank– an account whose number and info they do not know.
They can be dangerous to you if you are making good money from you business that you funnel through them. In some of these cases they will flag you for being successful in sales (ie you could be selling widgets on ebay etc) and will have you fax all kinds of documents to show you are a legit business and then STILL hold onto your funds and possibly skim from them as they have done with many people.
Does anyone thing that this MIGHT mean that Amazon might be able to pay foreign writers via EFT rather than by cheque at some point? I remember the justification that people used to use was that Amazon would have to be dependent on an external pay service like Pay Pall, which would not suit them. I’m stuck using payoneer to transfer my money, and it’s really not an ideal setup.
Amazon pays UK writers by credit transfer even for US sales – has done for some time. Don’t know what the position is for other countries. I use Paypal because I run an eBay business and it’s been OK so far but only for very small sums of money. Yesterday BBC radio was running a news story about somebody from London who had tried to buy tickets for a Cuban musical gig (also in London) and had her Paypal account frozen because of that single word ‘Cuba’. She was not a happy bunny. I wouldn’t have been either. There were related stories about people’s accounts being similarly frozen when they tried to buy items of clothing (again in the UK) with the word ‘Cuba’ describing a printed pattern.
UK, Canada, and some parts of Europe get paid in a method that does not require sacrificing a small animal in order to get your money, but the rest of the world is still stuck in the bad old days of cheques, sadly.
That’s a shame. I remember the cost until they changed it here in the UK and it stung!
Amazon pays me by direct transfer into a current account here in Germany. I love that, there is no hassle involved.
If this becomes popular, it’ll be dangerous to my budget. PayPal and I have had issues, so I won’t use them if I can help it. Amazon? Never had an issue they didn’t fall over backwards to fix.