Amazon Payments, Inc. is a wholly owned subsidiary

Subsidiary

A subsidiary company, subsidiary, or daughter company is a company that is completely or partly owned and wholly controlled by another company that owns more than half of the subsidiary's stock. The subsidiary can be a company, corporation, or limited liability company. In some cases it is a...

 of Amazon.com

Amazon.com

Amazon.com, Inc. is a multinational electronic commerce company headquartered in Seattle, Washington, United States. It is the world's largest online retailer. Amazon has separate websites for the following countries: United States, Canada, United Kingdom, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Japan, and...

  that provides a means to process transactions online. Launched in 2006, Amazon Payments uses the consumer base of Amazon.com and focuses on giving users the same checkout experience available on Amazon.com.

Amazon Payments has several products for consumers, businesses, and developers.

Online purchases

Amazon Payments is a way for customers to purchase goods and services at websites across the internet using the payment methods in their Amazon.com accounts, such as their Visa or MasterCard. (Currently Amazon.com and Amazon Payments will not accept payment methods such as PayPal or Google Checkout.) At participating vendors, which include Patagonia

Patagonia (clothing)

Patagonia, Inc. is a Ventura, California-based clothing company, focusing mainly on outdoor clothing. The company is a member of several environmental movements. It was founded by Yvon Chouinard in 1972....

 and Jockey, users can check out using their Amazon account information without needing to re-enter credit card numbers or shipping addresses. Users can also check out with Amazon's 1 Click.

Other consumer products

• Amazon TextBuyIt is an SMS
  SMS
  SMS is a form of text messaging communication on phones and mobile phones. The terms SMS or sms may also refer to:- Computer hardware :...
  
  -based service which allows users to find items, check prices, or purchase items simply by sending a text message to "262966" (AMAZON). Users can also text searches to "262966" and receive search results and prices quickly.

• Amazon WebPay is a free service to send or receive money using an e-mail address or mobile telephone number.

• Amazon TextPayMe is a service similar to WebPay, except users can use SMS messages to complete the transaction. The premise behind the service was to allow users to pay each other instantly and securely, without having to carry change or remember IOUs.

Checkout by Amazon

Checkout by Amazon (CBA) is an e-commerce solution that allows web merchants to accept Amazon account information and use Amazon for payment processing. CBA can manage several aspects of the transaction including order processing, promotional discounts, shipping rates, sales tax calculation, and up-selling. Depending upon the needs of the merchant, CBA can be integrated into the merchant's systems with manual processing (through Seller Central) or through SOAP APIs or downloadable CSV files. CBA also claims to reduce bad debt

Bad debt

A bad debt is an amount that is written off by the business as a loss to the business and classified as an expense because the debt owed to the business is unable to be collected, and all reasonable efforts have been exhausted to collect the amount owed...

 because of Amazon's fraud detection capabilities.

Amazon Simple Pay

Amazon Simple Pay (ASP) is a set of payment-only products that allows web merchants to accept Amazon account information and use Amazon for payment-only processing. ASP differs from CBA in that ASP does not handle additional capabilities associated with order processing such as promotions, tax & shipping, and so on.

Amazon PayPhrase

Amazon PayPhrase is a recent (November 2009) addition to Amazon Payments which allows customers to check out by typing their PayPhrase and their PIN without having to enter any shipping or credit card information. As of now, this is accepted at Amazon.com as well as at certain retailers, including Buy.com and J&R Music and Computers. PayPhrase's claim of being additionally secure is controversial.

Flexible Payments Service

Flexible Payments Service (FPS), part of Amazon Web Services

Amazon Web Services

Amazon Web Services is a collection of remote computing services that together make up a cloud computing platform, offered over the Internet by Amazon.com...

, enables developers to use Amazon's scalable payment infrastructure to accept payments using the customer's Amazon account information. FPS includes several lightweight APIs that are designed to enable developers to get up and running quickly and easily.

External links

• Official website
• Everyone Send Me $5 TechCrunch
  TechCrunch
  TechCrunch is a web publication that offers technology news and analysis, as well as profiling of startup companies, products, and websites. It was founded by Michael Arrington in 2005, and was first published on June 11, 2005....
  
  , February 15, 2006.