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Paypal Looks to Crush Amazon’s Fledgling Payment Service With A New, Secret API

42 points by vaksel 17y ago

newsio 17y ago
"Crush" seems extreme. It seems like PayPal is trying to build hype while undermining its prime competitor by leaking documents to a pliant TechCrunch writer. It would have been nice to have comment from Amazon or developers who actually are considering these types of services. Edit: Developers out there considering such a payment service -- does the fact that Amazon offers other useful cloud services (EC2, and the storage service) potentially make its FPS more attractive than PayPal's offerings? In the enterprise IT world, some companies like to go through one vendor to streamline vendor points of contact (or they are forced to go through one vendor, owing to a lack of interoperability) -- is there a similar desire among small, online-oriented companies that might use these payment services?
- rjurney 17y ago
  For one thing, to use Amazon payments person to person, you had to hook a bank account to your account. Which makes it basically useless - most people won't, they like using paypal credit card based cashes.
deleted 17y ago
[deleted]
MicahWedemeyer 17y ago
I've used both PayPal and FPS. PayPal allows you to get on your feet quickly, but limits what you can eventually do. FPS has a massive feature set, coupled with a massively complex API. Amazon needs to tackle the complexity issues. FPS has a thousand error states, and payments fail all the time with little to no explanation. Good luck with the resolution process, too. Here's my most recent attempt at getting some help on failed transactions: http://files.getdropbox.com/u/145070/fps_error.png http://files.getdropbox.com/u/145070/fps_error.png
- gizmo 17y ago
  I can't help but notice the attitude you show when filling out the support form. The guy on the other end reading it probably isn't the one at fault for the lack of clarity in the error message. Answering messages like yours all day long really sucks. Cryptic error messages are frustrating, but there's no need to be nasty.
  - MicahWedemeyer 17y ago
    Heh, it wouldn't even let me submit the form. Note the error message in the top left. That's when I got nasty and took the screenshot.
  - Xichekolas 17y ago
    I agree about his tone, but he does have a point about the API complexity. On the surface, FPS is quite simple, but when researching all the ways to use the marketplace API, it seemed like, more often than not, the only way to figure out if the API could do what I wanted was to ask in the forum and hope the FPS people answered me. Thankfully, they often do, so at least we know they care. (The last time I seriously looked at this was almost a year ago, so take my anecdote with a fist-full of salt.)
    - MicahWedemeyer 17y ago
      The lack of a full-featured web console means that you're pretty much still right. They need a way to log into your account and run some of the API operations, like making a Caller token. As it is, you have to script up some kind of kludge. You end up spending several hours just getting off the ground.
  - moe 17y ago
    Cryptic error messages are frustrating, but there's no need to be nasty. Wrong. If you want to achieve anything then be nasty. Be an asshole. Be the goddamn pestilence. You want the two little red up-arrows in their ticket tracker, not the blue "deferred" orb icon or the green auto-responder checkmark. You don't want to increment a number in the monthly customer service report sheet. You want the head of customer service walk up personally to his manager and wince something like "Yelp, the users are raising living hell over this issue". There are ofcourse exceptions, some companies have excellent customer support and don't need that kind of treatment. But when dealing with a behemoth like amazon then that's the only way to get anywhere, in my expirience from both sides of the frontline. Remember the poor helpdesk guy can not judge that this is a brown paper bag bug. A failed payment transaction should obviously provide more information than "Error. Period.". But how could he possibly know that? He can't. So what does he do when the inquiries about insufficient error messages begin to pile up? He walks up to his manager, who doesn't have a clue about the technical pecularities either. He can only judge the inbound corpus by volume and intensity. Unless you represent a large customer your volume will always be 1. Hence your only leverage is in the intensity knob.
tybris 17y ago
Paypal has brought very little innovation since they were acquired by eBay. I'd be surprised if this suddenly changed.
- frossie 17y ago
  Me too. But there was a suggestion floating around the Internet that eBay management is "tired" of eBay (which many would argue they have ruined with their changes in the last few years) and looking to PayPal to be their main cash cow. In which case, they do have to at least keep up with their competitors.
  - quizbiz 17y ago
    Both brands can go much, much further. We can't predict much about the web 10 years down the road but it's pretty safe to say that more and more buying and selling will be occurring on the web. If I was in charge of ebay, I would slightly rebrand to form an online commerce umbrella.
    - netsp 17y ago
      Back to the paypal/ebay vs Amazon, I think you're right. These are both really online commerce enablers. I would place my bets on Amazon coming through on top. They have a stronger history of innovating & consistent improvement over time. Paypal & Ebay have this aura of scaling down to the 'I'll sell you my hat' level. They do. But I wonder how much of Ebay's (or paypal's) bottom line comes from the not-a-business crowd vs from actual businesses.

42 points by vaksel 17y ago

"Crush" seems extreme. It seems like PayPal is trying to build hype while undermining its prime competitor by leaking documents to a pliant TechCrunch writer. It would have been nice to have comment from Amazon or developers who actually are considering these types of services. Edit: Developers out there considering such a payment service -- does the fact that Amazon offers other useful cloud services (EC2, and the storage service) potentially make its FPS more attractive than PayPal's offerings? In the enterprise IT world, some companies like to go through one vendor to streamline vendor points of contact (or they are forced to go through one vendor, owing to a lack of interoperability) -- is there a similar desire among small, online-oriented companies that might use these payment services?

rjurney 17y ago
For one thing, to use Amazon payments person to person, you had to hook a bank account to your account. Which makes it basically useless - most people won't, they like using paypal credit card based cashes.

deleted 17y ago

[deleted]

MicahWedemeyer 17y ago

I've used both PayPal and FPS. PayPal allows you to get on your feet quickly, but limits what you can eventually do. FPS has a massive feature set, coupled with a massively complex API. Amazon needs to tackle the complexity issues. FPS has a thousand error states, and payments fail all the time with little to no explanation. Good luck with the resolution process, too. Here's my most recent attempt at getting some help on failed transactions: http://files.getdropbox.com/u/145070/fps_error.png http://files.getdropbox.com/u/145070/fps_error.png

gizmo 17y ago
I can't help but notice the attitude you show when filling out the support form. The guy on the other end reading it probably isn't the one at fault for the lack of clarity in the error message. Answering messages like yours all day long really sucks. Cryptic error messages are frustrating, but there's no need to be nasty.
- MicahWedemeyer 17y ago
  Heh, it wouldn't even let me submit the form. Note the error message in the top left. That's when I got nasty and took the screenshot.
- Xichekolas 17y ago
  I agree about his tone, but he does have a point about the API complexity. On the surface, FPS is quite simple, but when researching all the ways to use the marketplace API, it seemed like, more often than not, the only way to figure out if the API could do what I wanted was to ask in the forum and hope the FPS people answered me. Thankfully, they often do, so at least we know they care. (The last time I seriously looked at this was almost a year ago, so take my anecdote with a fist-full of salt.)
  - MicahWedemeyer 17y ago
    The lack of a full-featured web console means that you're pretty much still right. They need a way to log into your account and run some of the API operations, like making a Caller token. As it is, you have to script up some kind of kludge. You end up spending several hours just getting off the ground.
- moe 17y ago
  Cryptic error messages are frustrating, but there's no need to be nasty. Wrong. If you want to achieve anything then be nasty. Be an asshole. Be the goddamn pestilence. You want the two little red up-arrows in their ticket tracker, not the blue "deferred" orb icon or the green auto-responder checkmark. You don't want to increment a number in the monthly customer service report sheet. You want the head of customer service walk up personally to his manager and wince something like "Yelp, the users are raising living hell over this issue". There are ofcourse exceptions, some companies have excellent customer support and don't need that kind of treatment. But when dealing with a behemoth like amazon then that's the only way to get anywhere, in my expirience from both sides of the frontline. Remember the poor helpdesk guy can not judge that this is a brown paper bag bug. A failed payment transaction should obviously provide more information than "Error. Period.". But how could he possibly know that? He can't. So what does he do when the inquiries about insufficient error messages begin to pile up? He walks up to his manager, who doesn't have a clue about the technical pecularities either. He can only judge the inbound corpus by volume and intensity. Unless you represent a large customer your volume will always be 1. Hence your only leverage is in the intensity knob.

tybris 17y ago

Paypal has brought very little innovation since they were acquired by eBay. I'd be surprised if this suddenly changed.

frossie 17y ago
Me too. But there was a suggestion floating around the Internet that eBay management is "tired" of eBay (which many would argue they have ruined with their changes in the last few years) and looking to PayPal to be their main cash cow. In which case, they do have to at least keep up with their competitors.
- quizbiz 17y ago
  Both brands can go much, much further. We can't predict much about the web 10 years down the road but it's pretty safe to say that more and more buying and selling will be occurring on the web. If I was in charge of ebay, I would slightly rebrand to form an online commerce umbrella.
  - netsp 17y ago
    Back to the paypal/ebay vs Amazon, I think you're right. These are both really online commerce enablers. I would place my bets on Amazon coming through on top. They have a stronger history of innovating & consistent improvement over time. Paypal & Ebay have this aura of scaling down to the 'I'll sell you my hat' level. They do. But I wonder how much of Ebay's (or paypal's) bottom line comes from the not-a-business crowd vs from actual businesses.