Amazon announced the releasing of the beta version of what they are calling the “Amazon Flexible Payment Service” or Amazon FPS for short. Basically, at the moment, it would appear to be a backend payment system much like paypal or google checkout. There are no individual sign ups at the moment, and it’s unclear whether an individual who wants to make a purchase will have to sign up.
If you’re a developer, you can sign up for a beta login, but they are limited.
FPS provides developers with a rule-based processing model. The FPS Gatekeeper system cross-checks the payment instructions from each party in order to confirm the validity of each transaction. Using this model you can create one-time or recurring transactions, transactions limited by date, by amount, or even by a list of authorized senders or recipients. You can even aggregate a slew of micro-payments into a single large transaction that’s of a reasonable size for credit card or other payment processing.
Since we’ve been processing payments for over ten years, we have a really good understanding of the cost and fee structures which are associated with each type of payment method. The cost to process a credit card, a bank account debit, or an Amazon Payments balance transfer differ greatly from each other. FPS exposes these fees directly, passing on the savings to the developer while also making provisions for the volume discounts available when large volumes of credit card payments are processed.
Any new entrant into the payment processing space faces a classic “chicken and egg” problem. Until there are lots of items to pay for, there’s no real reason for people to sign up for the service. Vendors are reluctant to do the integration work needed to accept a new form of payment until there is a critical mass of people willing to use it. Fortunately, we have both ends of poultry life cycle covered. We also sell chickens and eggs, but that’s another story entirely!
It’s sounds like it could be pretty useful. Depends on how quickly the developers take it up and get it working. I would expect more than a few eBay applications as well as some that are generically for auctions all together.
[tags]amazon,amazon fps,amazon flexible payment system,ebay,ubid,ebid[/tags]
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