PayPal is one of the easiest and most used methods out there for making payments online. Online merchants integrate PayPal into their web stores allowing customers to pay from their accounts, though most web stores require customers to first create a user ID, which basically means there’s yet another username and password for the customer to remember. Amazon has launched a service that not only fixes this problem, but takes PayPal head on for the online payment business. Online merchants can integrate Amazon’s “Login and Pay” service into their web stores and allow customers to make payments through the credentials stored in their Amazon account.
This effectively eliminates the need for customers to sign up for an account on the merchant’s web store just for the purpose of checking out. They’ll just need to enter their Amazon credentials and make payments for whatever they’ve purchased from that merchant, since their Amazon account is already configured to make payments, they’ll never be required to fill out credit or debit card information on the merchant’s website. Its an ambitious service that aims to tackle PayPal, and with more than 215 million active customer accounts on Amazon, it just might be able to make a dent. The service is free for customers, but merchants will have to pay. Instead of paying a monthly fee or a number of other charges, merchants will only pay once a customer makes a purchase on their web store and they’ll receive fraud protection that likes of which is implement on amazon.com. A number of merchants have already teamed up to use Amazon’s new service, it’ll be interesting to see how quickly it grows with other online merchants, of all sizes.