9 ms·

Amazon Local Register

321 points by dkyc 12y ago

aembleton 12y ago
Would be cool if they supported chip and pin and paypass.
- Calcite 12y ago
  I wonder if these kind of initiatives slow the adoption of chip and pin credit cards in the US. If Amazon is willing to lower the fees for swipes, pin entered transactions could be even lower.
  - Crito 12y ago
    I think that one of the problems for chip and pin adoption in the US is that there isn't a compelling reason for US consumers to desire it. Credit card fraud might be a pain-point for merchants, but it simply is not for consumers. On the rare occasion that somebody makes a fraudulent purchase on my credit card, my credit card company flags the transaction. In the exceptionally rare case that this fails, I just call my credit card company and tell them that the transaction was fraudulent. Takes no more than 5 minutes, and I can count the number of times I've had to do it in the past 10 years on one hand. Why then would I want the hassle of punching in a PIN? I'm a consumer, not a merchant. I don't care about what benefits the merchant gets out of it.
- heywire 12y ago
  I came here to make a similar comment. We need more companies pushing adoption of EMV here in the states. I know it isn't a perfect solution, but it is certainly better than the mag-stripe situation we have today. It makes me nervous whenever I see one of these devices being used in the wild. The first generation of Square devices were very easy to siphon raw track data off of. As a customer, how do I know that the device you have attached to your personal phone is secure? I don't know the security behind the latest generations of these devices, but it still makes me uneasy swiping my credit card on someone's personal device that has who-knows-what malware on it.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
aembleton 12y ago
Looks like this is just for the US. Do any of you have cashback credit cards that offer >1.75% ?
- ssharp 12y ago
  My AMEX points work out to 1.33% and my Capital One gives 1.5% . Both are statement credits. I haven't personally seen or been offered anything better than Capital One for that type of incentive. I'd guess some points/loyalty hacker has figured out how to get over 1.75%, but it probably wouldn't be cashback through direct statement credits.
- brucehart 12y ago
  I used to have an HSBC card that offered 2% cash back on weekend purchases. Capital One acquired HSBC's accounts a few years ago and no longer offers that deal.
- a-priori 12y ago
  I'm in Canada, not the US, but I have one that gives 4% cash back on gas and groceries and 2% at pharmacies and for bill payments. http://www.scotiabank.com/ca/en/0,,86,00.html http://www.scotiabank.com/ca/en/0,,86,00.html
- smileysteve 12y ago
  I know discover is planning 5% amazon rewards in q4.
- dankoss 12y ago
  Fidelity Amex offers 2% on everything with no limit.
- gergles 12y ago
  There is a Fidelity-branded Amex card that gives 2% on everything, with no annual fee. There are several other cards that give 2% on everything (Capital One Venture, Barclay Arrival+) but that bear annual fees.
- matwood 12y ago
BrentOzar 12y ago
Think of Amazon's role as an online merchant: they've built a 3rd party merchant system where other folks can use Amazon's retail and distribution. Then, they gathered centralized data of what sells, at what prices. They stepped in and started carrying more profitable items themselves. Now, look at their role here: if this takes off, they'll have data on what merchants are selling, for how much, and to whom. These are items that Amazon wouldn't normally get sales data on because people choose local vendors instead. If Amazon wanted to start pushing more into local markets (or different kinds of products), they can make a fortune off this data, and that's why they can afford to undercut companies like Square. It's a long term play.
- mapleoin 12y ago
  They're only undercutting Square until 2015, after that the fee is 2.75%, same as Square. Read the fine print.
  - christop 12y ago
    Until 2016.
  - BrentOzar 12y ago
    > They're only undercutting Square until 2015, after that the fee is 2.75%, same as Square. Read the fine print. Yes, because Amazon never lowers their prices, do they? Read the news.
  - gst 12y ago
    According to the site it's 2.5% instead of 2.75%.
  - mdasen 12y ago
    Not quite. The rate after the promo rate is 2.5% which still undercuts Square. The 2.75% rate is for manually Keyed transactions. Also, the promo lasts until 2016, a good amount of time to convince users to switch and then keep them with marginally lower rates. From the page: "Sign up by October 31, 2014 to lock in this special rate through December 31, 2015. Pay 2.5% beginning January 1, 2016. Rates apply to all major credit and debit cards."
Igglyboo 12y ago
Can someone explain why manually keyed transactions cost more than swipes? I'm thinking there's more risk involved with those or something along those lines.
- nodata 12y ago
  It's easier to enter a fake credit card number than to produce a fake credit card.
- madeofpalk 12y ago
  Yup! Those are referred to as 'card not present' transactions (just like shopping online) and due to the higher risk, there's a higher charge for processing. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Card_not_present_transaction http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Card_not_present_transaction
- qeorge 12y ago
  In addition to the visible data (the card number, the expiration, and the CVV), there is other information encoded on the stripe that you cannot see (its called Track 2 data). A swiped transaction will include the Track 2 data, but a keyed one will not. The Track 2 data proves that a physical card was present, which carries a far lower risk of fraud, and thus grants a lower processing rate. Notably, in the recent Target breach, the Track 2 data was stolen as well. This means the thieves could print up real, swipeable cards.
  - alexchamberlain 12y ago
    Or it proves the card was cloned?
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
- btian 12y ago
  It's all statistics. Manually keyed transactions have higher fraud rate, thus higher transaction fee.
mrfusion 12y ago
Does this track inventory? I can't really tell.
undertheradar2 12y ago
Does anyone know how this could integrate with QuickBooks? We currently use Quickbooks Point of Sale to run the cash register and inventory and it loads into the QuickBooks company file each night. I'd love to switch to something like this but I'm not really clear on how the accounting would work.
hemancuso 12y ago
The rate at which Amazon is rolling out products is nothing short of dizzying. Reminds me of Google before Larry came back and retook the reigns. Inevitably they will come to a point where they start shutting down a subset of their enormous product line. It was one thing to have google wave or reader dropped, but when amazon kills some of these lines it'll affect people in real ways. And it will happen. Here is for hoping they eventually focus on making their products better instead of constantly making new ones. Even look at AWS. I would struggle to name 80% of the services under that umbrella in under a minute.
- aed 12y ago
  You may be right, I agree that it's bound to happen at some point. I think one big difference is Amazon is rolling out revenue-producing products and Google was rolling out non-revenue-producing "experiments."
  - hemancuso 12y ago
    I agree with that to a point. But unless these products are profitable it doesn't really matter if they produce revenue. Folk long-argued that it was valuable for Google to have all of these free products because it kept them in the Google ecosystem. They were spending more time on Google, which had real value. The problem is the cost that comes with lack of focus. Exploding headcount. Unclear corporate vision. When only a few of your products make nearly all of your money, why spend a bunch of energy on a lot of things that lose money, or make practically no profit? I'd love to see Amazon spend real effort on making AWS easier to use [for people who are not deeply steeped in AWS already, it's hard]. For the love of God, I can't believe AWS console still makes you globally switch on region for everything. Can't there just big a dashboard that lets you see and control, ya know, everything? It's things like that. Things that have been bad for a long time. Instead of pushing out redshift or cognitio or zocalo or workspaces or elastic transcoder, how about they make AWS as a whole a better product? Something easier to user. Something more consistent.
    - taeric 12y ago
martinnormark 12y ago
The awesome Brian Roemmele announced this on Quora two weeks ago: http://acceptingpayments.quora.com/Quora-News-Before-It-Happens-Amazon-To-Compete-Head-To-Head-With-Square http://acceptingpayments.quora.com/Quora-News-Before-It-Happ... Exciting times, to see what unfolds in this payment war. Apple will certainly get there soon: http://acceptingpayments.quora.com/Apple%E2%80%99s-iWallet-And-Retail-Payments-Plans-Have-Been-Exposed-In-A-New-Patent http://acceptingpayments.quora.com/Apple%E2%80%99s-iWallet-A... http://acceptingpayments.quora.com/Confirmed-Apple-iPhone-Event-On-September-9th-2014 http://acceptingpayments.quora.com/Confirmed-Apple-iPhone-Ev... http://acceptingpayments.quora.com/Apple-Patent-Shows-How-Passbook-Becomes-The-iWallet http://acceptingpayments.quora.com/Apple-Patent-Shows-How-Pa...
meritt 12y ago
I'm guessing the product roadmap looks something like: Point of Sale -> Inventory Management -> All of your physical inventory is also available for purchase on Amazon.com Brilliant.
- minikomi 12y ago
  All of Amazon's logistics for delivery / warehousing is available to you for a small fee..
knes 12y ago
In a typical Scorpion manner (http://www.feld.com/archives/2014/07/amazons-scorpion-problem.html http://www.feld.com/archives/2014/07/amazons-scorpion-proble...), they are going in for the kill.
chrisan 12y ago
Does anyone know the true bottom to transaction fees? Are they taking a loss at 1.75% to acquire user base?
- PeterisP 12y ago
  Large volume can get costs of infrastructure per transaction absurdly low; the true floor is the interchange rate that you pay to the card issuer; it depends on type of card but it can be ~1% for many of them. American express is much higher, taking amex at 1.75% is definitely a loss.
  - ddispaltro 12y ago
    I've always wondered what kind of deal Costco did with American Express to make it the only accepted credit card. It's probably membership + exclusivity that allows AMEX to have much lower fraud and therefore pass on the savings to Costco.
- jcampbell1 12y ago
  I do know the "true bottom", but it is 200 pages of documents, and will depend on the mix of debit cards, Amex, and card levels such as Business/Signature/etc, and international, and average transaction amount. If you are interested Visa alone, then the latest fee schedule is here: http://usa.visa.com/download/merchants/Visa-Interchange-Reimbursement-Fees-April-2014.pdf http://usa.visa.com/download/merchants/Visa-Interchange-Reim... 1.45%-1.65% + $0.10 is a very common interchange for retail. The 1.75%+$0.00 pricing is going to be zero margin for them. If some merchant just uses Amazon for Amex, they will lose on that merchant. If the merchant primarily serves debit card customers, Amazon will make a small amount of money.
- bhahn 12y ago
  I'd assume so because the 1.75% is available for a limited-time only. The fine print mentions that the standard rates (after the promotional period) are 2.5% and 2.75%.
bambax 12y ago
This sounds a little like a joke. Amazon is the biggest competitor brick-and-mortar shops have ever seen; why would shops want to give that kind of information to Amazon, so that it knows in real time what people are buying outside of itself??? A coffeeshop, maybe, but for any other kind of business it sounds crazy.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
- itry 12y ago
  Plus you will advertise Amazon with their logo on the device :-)
- dminor 12y ago
  1.75% is a huge discount.
  - thejosh 12y ago
    It depends on your volume, i've seen a lot less with medium size volume.
  - rickyc091 12y ago
    That on top of the next day money deposit is a real incentive.
    - pmorici 12y ago
      That is pretty common among modern payment processors, Square, Stripe, Bitpay, etc...
      - cbhl 12y ago
        Considering that consumers have months to make a chargeback, this is a relatively new thing in the payments industry (last few years). I suspect it'll make the horror stories that much worse when a small business owner has already spent the money that someone wants refunded.
jnardiello 12y ago
It's a trap. You, owner of a shop, don't do this. Amazon will first analyze all your sales data, they will than attach reviews to your shop and finally they will oblige you to play by their rules or die (banned or killed by bad reviews) and either way they will grow thanks to your hard work. I'm not joking, this is exactly what they have done (and keep doing) with "partners". Amazon is all but transparent and it has been growing like crazy during the last 6-8 years thanks to this exact strategy. Online is not enough anymore, they need to conquer local stores as well. The empire strikes back.
- itry 12y ago
  > they will than attach reviews to your shop They will come and stick reviews on your window or what?
  - jnardiello 12y ago
    How they will implement reviews for local shops is speculation at this point, but yes. They will allow reviews for local shops and use them to influence buyers choosing where to cut their hairs or where to buy the best cakes.
- antr 12y ago
  I get your comment and agree with it, but... It's funny how us (the HN/startup/pro disruptive audience) is very pro change (let's get rid off the middle man because we can create software that can do this cheaper and more efficient) and now we are 'rooting' for the brick and mortar business. There is a sociological take away somewhere here.
  - clamprecht 12y ago
    Change can be good, but it also matters who is "running" the change.
  - gdulli 12y ago
    Some change/progress is good and some is bad and that doesn't seem like a subtle point. I don't know how anyone gets into the mindset of assuming change is inherently good or inherently bad.
happywolf 12y ago
In this game, one of the factors is frauds. The solution provider who is able to keep fraud rate under control will have an advantage.
- thrownaway2424 12y ago
  Right and those two players are google and apple. Phone-present transactions with strong authentication and irrefutability would be far cheaper to process. Google had been screwing the pooch for years with android wallet. They should have owned this market years ago.
LukeHoersten 12y ago
I can't sign up because all my amazon accounts are associated with other Amazon payment services? Is this an AWS thing?
nicholassmith 12y ago
Wow, talk about doing a deal with the devil. Amazon will just apply their standard rule book to the situation and choke the market, and use the data to make it easier to determine what markets are worth investing in for hyperlocal sales tools. It honestly seems like no good can come of this, it looks like a wonderful tool, but the risks? Eeesh.
gambiting 12y ago
What is it with swipe cards in the US? A lot of businesses in the EU don't take them due to security risks and only accept chip-and-pin payments,yet US parties like it's 1991?
- aet 12y ago
  We have drones and CC tv everywhere in U.S. monitoring your every move. So fraud not an issue.
- PeterisP 12y ago
  The fraud liability shift for swipe cards in USA will be at the end of 2015, so there's some time still left - but such a card reader definitely isn't futureproof, and they'll need a new model after a year or so.
  - jessaustin 12y ago
    Can you provide any more information about this "fraud liability shift"? To whom is fraud liability shifting? By how much is it shifting? Why would such a shift concern Amazon? EDIT: TIL retailers will have more liability. I suspect Amazon will find a way to pass that on to the actual retailer. Changes like this have a way of getting delayed in USA, as well.
    - gambiting 12y ago
      Based on my experience with how EU shops approach swipe cards, the shift in the US is from the bank to the retailer, when it comes to responsibility for authorizing the transaction. At the moment in the EU it's trivial to go to a shop, pay with a swipe card, scribble something on the receipt(most people working at the till are not used to seeing swipe cards so they don't check signatures too well), call you bank saying you don't recognize the charge, they ask the merchant for the copy of the receipt, compare the signature with the one they have, and because they don't match they reverse the charge, leaving the merchant with no goods and no money. So most shops simply don't take swipe cards to stop fraud - with pin-and-chip cards banks cannot reverse payments from merchants, because it's the bank verifying the pin, not the merchant. My understanding is, that in the US banks cannot reverse payments to merchants,so no retailer has any problem with taking swipe cards, but if that responsibility changes, then merchants won't be happy to accept them anymore.
ape4 12y ago
Using the audio jack like Square. Isn't there a way yet to use digital like USB yet.
- robin_reala 12y ago
  Or alternatively Bluetooth. iZettle’s approach is a selfcontained chip+PIN device that communicates with the app on your smartphone wirelessly. The app then handles 3G connection. https://www.izettle.com/gb/card-readers https://www.izettle.com/gb/card-readers
  - ape4 12y ago
    Of course, Bluetooth. It could still plug into the iPhone audio jack for stability.
    - robin_reala 12y ago
      I’ve used these devices before. Merchant facing functionality (e.g. entering prices) is on the phone side, customer facing functionality on the box. The customer never needs to touch the phone.
- icebraining 12y ago
  Using the audio jack allows them to make a very dumb, very cheap reader. All you need is a magnetic head (like those in cassette decks) and a maybe a couple of basic components. See the disassembly of the Square reader: http://cosmodro.me/blog/2011/mar/25/rhombus-square-iskewedi/ http://cosmodro.me/blog/2011/mar/25/rhombus-square-iskewedi/
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
bowlofpetunias 12y ago
Ah, more 90's payment technology from the US. It's becoming a bit of a running joke. (Also, extremely annoying when you live in a city with lots of American tourists that think you can still pay that way in 2014.) Why on earth would you still develop new services for something that is so outdated and has been so completely broken and discredited even my 72 year old mother knows it's unsafe?
- jessaustin 12y ago
  Security is a process, dude. Chip'n'pin has had its issues as well. (Issues which in some jurisdictions have been passed on to consumers. Fun!) The marketing efforts have certainly been more successful in Europe than in USA, however. I guess maybe we'll just have to bring more cash, or perhaps maybe vacation in more enlightened locales.
jobu 12y ago
As a consumer, I'm hoping this makes it easier to find local services. There are a number of options, but none are great. Angie's List has mediocre search and an awkward interface. Craigslist can be great, but it's more often wading through a cesspool of spam and shady companies to find the few decent ones. Yelp seems to have pretty good reviews for restaurants, but not much else.
usaphp 12y ago
They did not even bother to create some unique design of a landing page [1], just copied it from SquareUp [2] -> PayPal [3] pages: 1. http://localregister.amazon.com/ http://localregister.amazon.com/ 2. https://squareup.com/ https://squareup.com/ 3. https://www.paypal.com/webapps/mpp/credit-card-reader https://www.paypal.com/webapps/mpp/credit-card-reader
- bdcravens 12y ago
  They're not that similar, aside from common UI elements seen all over the web, and showing the device and app. Honestly, the Square page looks like a typical theme you can buy on ThemeForest for less than $20
- ceejayoz 12y ago
  It should not be shocking that three identical products have to convey similar sets of information to prospective customers.
MadManE 12y ago
I think it's very interesting that the Amazon phone is not one of the supported devices for this.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
- bentcorner 12y ago
  Although not unsurprising. Once corporations get large enough you get this sort of desynchronization. Maintaining product development secrecy while also ensuring internal teams have aligned goals can be difficult.
  - MadManE 12y ago
    Very true. I think it just highlights some of the cracks in their armor, so to speak.
byandyphillips 12y ago
Did a 14 year old design this page? I thought Amazon had talented people working for them.
hyperliner 12y ago
Unfortunately, the reality is that small business and service providers will use this service because they won't realize that the long term implications of this Amazon move will work against them. For them, everything is short term (swipe fees, reporting, etc.), and when we are talking about the "future them" that is "someone else" 10 years from now. This is really the prisoner's dilemma with thousands and thousands of prisoners. Alternatively, it is the frog inside the boiling water. The frog never jumps out of the water. It just dies.
tomasien 12y ago
1.75% limited of time offer makes me want to vomit. The one thing I like about Square is at least they're not like other CC processors that make the careers HIDING fees from their merchants. Now Amazon is coming out the gate doing this. Many of us are fighting these fees online - even the CC processors like Stripe are at least straightforward with their fees even if they're forced to make them higher than they'd like - but it looks like for in person swipes we're stuck with the status quo.
- twistedpair 12y ago
  > 1.75% limited of time offer makes me want to vomit. So Amzn should offer a lower rate, free perhaps? Or are they hiding fees somewhere else? Please you explain your aversion more.
  - tomasien 12y ago
    It's temporary - they're making it seem like it's lower than it is. They're going to lock people in and then jack up the rate - it's classic CC processing trick and it's BULLSHIT. Even if the real price is written somewhere, it's still horseshit.
    - rvn1045 12y ago
      Can you name a significant number of instances where Amazon has not lowered prices over a medium to long term period? Amazon has consistently made things inexpensive for the consumer. Sometimes even taking losses to ensure that customers get a lower price.
      - tomasien 12y ago
        This is my point - y'all aren't even reading what Amazon is saying! They're LITERALLY going to raise the price to 2.5% - it's on the page! It's actually spelled out "we are going to raise our prices".
    - badusername 12y ago
rb2k_ 12y ago
I'm interested to see how the "manufactured spent / churning" crowd will use this. There are credit cards with 2% (fidelity amex) or 2.2% (barlays arrival plus) cashback out there. Having a 1.75% fee on this will probably have some of them experiment :) I'm sure Amazon will shut that down, but I'd love to see how much spent people can run up before that happens.
- _mayo 12y ago
  Wouldn't that be considered fraud? Since you'd be defrauding Amex (genuinely curious).
  - rb2k_ 12y ago
    Amex still gets their swiping fee from Amazon, I don't think they care particularly much. I would assume Amazon just swallows the possible loss. (hence: introductory rate)
jseip 12y ago
I don't get this. Seems like a late entry into a saturated and (at least in Square's case) not that lucrative market. Any insight into why you would do this?
- bstpierre 12y ago
  Amazon already has all the infrastructure to deal with this, they can quickly achieve volume to build the readers at low cost (and take a loss in basically giving them away). Small shop owners are more likely to be familiar with the amazon brand versus square or others so their marketing/promotion is easier. Amazon very likely has tons of ways they can use the data they collect. They have opportunities for upsell: shops can buy ads, integrate with amazon on their website, start selling on amazon, etc. (speculation) Amazon sees threats from other competitors in this space, so they want to suck all the profit out of it. Note also that the business owner can spend funds on amazon immediately, or wait for funds to arrive in a bank account the next day. So amazon has a chance for extra sales there. I wonder if there's also a financial angle -- it says funds get deposited the next day, so it doesn't seem like amazon has a chance to sit on the funds for any length of time, but maybe there's some angle I'm not seeing.
- chippy 12y ago
  Amazon also has other services to shops and vendors.
- potatolicious 12y ago
  Saturated but most players are unprofitable. Amazon has an infinite well of money to not only out-price the competition but sustain a loss for long enough that the competition might actually die. Amazon also makes revenue off of attached services to merchants (Fulfillment by Amazon, the webstore, etc). This is part of the reason why Square has been trying to buy up merchant value-add companies.
fataliss 12y ago
Well one more blow to Square, hope they gonna make it through 2014 but the more I see the less I hope :/
sparkman55 12y ago
Another card reader that plugs into the audio port. I'd like to include one of these card readers into my own mobile app; has anyone had success using an SDK for integration? CardFlight seems like it would work, but it's a bit expensive...
jessaustin 12y ago
I guess maybe it saves some on TLS processing, but it's lame that I have to click through two screens to even start signing up. Especially since I'm already signed into Amazon!
mk00 12y ago
Goodnight square.
ig1 12y ago
People seem to be very confused at to who the target market is here. This isn't about bricks-and-mortar retailers switching to use Amazon as a payment mechanism, it's about providing a payment services for the (largely) local service vendors who sell their services via Amazon Local (Amazon's daily deal platform). Powering the payments system will give Amazon the data to do far more dynamic pricing (something which they have a lot of expertise in) for their vendors on Amazon Local which is a win for both the vendors and Amazon.
hullo 12y ago
Interesting to consider in tandem with AmazonSupply - a much bigger play for businesses, and one you hear very very little about. You can (and I'm sure they'd prefer that you do) use your Amazon Local Register proceeds to buy most of what you need to run your business. (Leaving aside restaurants/cafes – outside of AmazonFresh delivery markets anyway.) http://www.amazonsupply.com/ http://www.amazonsupply.com/ Forbes had a pretty extensive look a couple months back, the only big public airing it's gotten - http://www.forbes.com/sites/clareoconnor/2014/05/07/amazons-wholesale-slaughter-jeff-bezos-8-trillion-b2b-bet/ http://www.forbes.com/sites/clareoconnor/2014/05/07/amazons-...
chippy 12y ago
Would this would turn Amazon into a bank?
- brazzledazzle 12y ago
  They haven't gone after PayPal yet right?
lauradhamilton 12y ago
Seems like quite a low rate. I hope they have a good team/plan for anti-fraud, because merchant fraud is a different beast from e-tail fraud...
whitenoise 12y ago
[1]"Make sure the microphone on your device is turned on". I am not familiar with the card reader hardware. Why is a microphone needed for processing a credit card swipe? [1] - http://localregister.amazon.com/help/201549190/swiping-a-card http://localregister.amazon.com/help/201549190/swiping-a-car...
- crazy1van 12y ago
  I believe it plugs into the audio jack. The device captures a swipe as audio data as if it were a microphone and the software interprets the audio as magnetic stripe data.
- burnte 12y ago
  The reader inputs the data from the magstripe as audio data. The data on the stripe can be interpreted as audio data, and it is, piped in via the microphone part of the TRRS connector on the reader, just like your headset.
skywhopper 12y ago
"Pricing you can trust" rarely comes along with "LOW LOW PRICES IF YOU COMMIT NOW!" In fact, the combination of these two concepts in one ad campaign should double-red-flag this "opportunity".
mmanfrin 12y ago
Congrats to (my ex coworkers) the old GoPago team for rebuilding with Amazon!
gventures 12y ago
We sold them the localregister.com platform over 12 months ago after 7 years of development. They are going to crush it as they have with scale, speed and everything that makes amazon, amazon. It helped put our Contrib, Domain Holdings and Global Ventures companies into a great position with future integration of our customers using the currency movement system. They will eventually integrate across all platforms quickly starting with localregister.com. Gotta love competition, makes our world great
gventures 12y ago
LocalRegister.com to amazon was a great transaction for our team at Domain Holdings and Global Ventures. We are glad we can finally analyze this transaction and show others how key your url asset is and the potential technology and business models still to come for the domain channel.. Check out Contrib or BidTellect, two other up and coming platforms in good hands with big announcements soon.
gventures 12y ago
980% ROI in 7 years on localregister.com investment, finally I made money from Amazon verses spending it with them.
badusername 12y ago
How is Amazon able to offer such low rates when the VISA/MasterCard/Amex processing charges are themselves higher than that?
guiambros 12y ago
This is not (only) about putting local retailers out of business; it's about conquering consumer's wallet. In fact it'd be better for them if (most) of Amazon Local users do not go out of business. Having access to consumer spend outside their platform would give Amazon an incredible leverage. They'd be able to understand where else you're spending your money, which would allow all sorts of revenue streams: up-selling, cross-selling, Amazon Deals, advertising revenue, selling the raw data to data management platforms (e.g., BluaKai). They already do something similar with Amazon Payments, but it's mostly for online merchants. This can go much further, even to industries that they have no interest in entering. If you're paying a plumber or a painter, you may be interested in decoration. If you're buying a bicycle, you may need a helmet. Buy some baby clothes, and you may be expecting, and the perfect target for Amazon Mom (I hate this name; why not Amazon Baby, or Amazon Parents?). And let's not forget about the revenue coming from selling your data and your cookies, which they already do with advertising partners. While banks and card issuers have been doing this for decades, they are typically clueless about how to reach to consumers other than via direct mail, or co-branded email catalogs. And matching PII and databases is something that the FTC doesn't like much. It's brilliant move for them.

321 points by dkyc 12y ago

aembleton 12y ago

Would be cool if they supported chip and pin and paypass.

Calcite 12y ago
I wonder if these kind of initiatives slow the adoption of chip and pin credit cards in the US. If Amazon is willing to lower the fees for swipes, pin entered transactions could be even lower.
- Crito 12y ago
  I think that one of the problems for chip and pin adoption in the US is that there isn't a compelling reason for US consumers to desire it. Credit card fraud might be a pain-point for merchants, but it simply is not for consumers. On the rare occasion that somebody makes a fraudulent purchase on my credit card, my credit card company flags the transaction. In the exceptionally rare case that this fails, I just call my credit card company and tell them that the transaction was fraudulent. Takes no more than 5 minutes, and I can count the number of times I've had to do it in the past 10 years on one hand. Why then would I want the hassle of punching in a PIN? I'm a consumer, not a merchant. I don't care about what benefits the merchant gets out of it.
heywire 12y ago
I came here to make a similar comment. We need more companies pushing adoption of EMV here in the states. I know it isn't a perfect solution, but it is certainly better than the mag-stripe situation we have today. It makes me nervous whenever I see one of these devices being used in the wild. The first generation of Square devices were very easy to siphon raw track data off of. As a customer, how do I know that the device you have attached to your personal phone is secure? I don't know the security behind the latest generations of these devices, but it still makes me uneasy swiping my credit card on someone's personal device that has who-knows-what malware on it.
deleted 12y ago
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aembleton 12y ago

Looks like this is just for the US. Do any of you have cashback credit cards that offer >1.75% ?

ssharp 12y ago
My AMEX points work out to 1.33% and my Capital One gives 1.5% . Both are statement credits. I haven't personally seen or been offered anything better than Capital One for that type of incentive. I'd guess some points/loyalty hacker has figured out how to get over 1.75%, but it probably wouldn't be cashback through direct statement credits.
brucehart 12y ago
I used to have an HSBC card that offered 2% cash back on weekend purchases. Capital One acquired HSBC's accounts a few years ago and no longer offers that deal.
a-priori 12y ago
I'm in Canada, not the US, but I have one that gives 4% cash back on gas and groceries and 2% at pharmacies and for bill payments. http://www.scotiabank.com/ca/en/0,,86,00.html http://www.scotiabank.com/ca/en/0,,86,00.html
smileysteve 12y ago
I know discover is planning 5% amazon rewards in q4.
dankoss 12y ago
Fidelity Amex offers 2% on everything with no limit.
gergles 12y ago
There is a Fidelity-branded Amex card that gives 2% on everything, with no annual fee. There are several other cards that give 2% on everything (Capital One Venture, Barclay Arrival+) but that bear annual fees.
matwood 12y ago

BrentOzar 12y ago

Think of Amazon's role as an online merchant: they've built a 3rd party merchant system where other folks can use Amazon's retail and distribution. Then, they gathered centralized data of what sells, at what prices. They stepped in and started carrying more profitable items themselves. Now, look at their role here: if this takes off, they'll have data on what merchants are selling, for how much, and to whom. These are items that Amazon wouldn't normally get sales data on because people choose local vendors instead. If Amazon wanted to start pushing more into local markets (or different kinds of products), they can make a fortune off this data, and that's why they can afford to undercut companies like Square. It's a long term play.

mapleoin 12y ago
They're only undercutting Square until 2015, after that the fee is 2.75%, same as Square. Read the fine print.
- christop 12y ago
  Until 2016.
- BrentOzar 12y ago
  > They're only undercutting Square until 2015, after that the fee is 2.75%, same as Square. Read the fine print. Yes, because Amazon never lowers their prices, do they? Read the news.
- gst 12y ago
  According to the site it's 2.5% instead of 2.75%.
- mdasen 12y ago
  Not quite. The rate after the promo rate is 2.5% which still undercuts Square. The 2.75% rate is for manually Keyed transactions. Also, the promo lasts until 2016, a good amount of time to convince users to switch and then keep them with marginally lower rates. From the page: "Sign up by October 31, 2014 to lock in this special rate through December 31, 2015. Pay 2.5% beginning January 1, 2016. Rates apply to all major credit and debit cards."

Igglyboo 12y ago

Can someone explain why manually keyed transactions cost more than swipes? I'm thinking there's more risk involved with those or something along those lines.

nodata 12y ago
It's easier to enter a fake credit card number than to produce a fake credit card.
madeofpalk 12y ago
Yup! Those are referred to as 'card not present' transactions (just like shopping online) and due to the higher risk, there's a higher charge for processing. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Card_not_present_transaction http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Card_not_present_transaction
qeorge 12y ago
In addition to the visible data (the card number, the expiration, and the CVV), there is other information encoded on the stripe that you cannot see (its called Track 2 data). A swiped transaction will include the Track 2 data, but a keyed one will not. The Track 2 data proves that a physical card was present, which carries a far lower risk of fraud, and thus grants a lower processing rate. Notably, in the recent Target breach, the Track 2 data was stolen as well. This means the thieves could print up real, swipeable cards.
- alexchamberlain 12y ago
  Or it proves the card was cloned?
deleted 12y ago
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btian 12y ago
It's all statistics. Manually keyed transactions have higher fraud rate, thus higher transaction fee.

mrfusion 12y ago

Does this track inventory? I can't really tell.

undertheradar2 12y ago

Does anyone know how this could integrate with QuickBooks? We currently use Quickbooks Point of Sale to run the cash register and inventory and it loads into the QuickBooks company file each night. I'd love to switch to something like this but I'm not really clear on how the accounting would work.

hemancuso 12y ago

The rate at which Amazon is rolling out products is nothing short of dizzying. Reminds me of Google before Larry came back and retook the reigns. Inevitably they will come to a point where they start shutting down a subset of their enormous product line. It was one thing to have google wave or reader dropped, but when amazon kills some of these lines it'll affect people in real ways. And it will happen. Here is for hoping they eventually focus on making their products better instead of constantly making new ones. Even look at AWS. I would struggle to name 80% of the services under that umbrella in under a minute.

aed 12y ago
You may be right, I agree that it's bound to happen at some point. I think one big difference is Amazon is rolling out revenue-producing products and Google was rolling out non-revenue-producing "experiments."
- hemancuso 12y ago
  I agree with that to a point. But unless these products are profitable it doesn't really matter if they produce revenue. Folk long-argued that it was valuable for Google to have all of these free products because it kept them in the Google ecosystem. They were spending more time on Google, which had real value. The problem is the cost that comes with lack of focus. Exploding headcount. Unclear corporate vision. When only a few of your products make nearly all of your money, why spend a bunch of energy on a lot of things that lose money, or make practically no profit? I'd love to see Amazon spend real effort on making AWS easier to use [for people who are not deeply steeped in AWS already, it's hard]. For the love of God, I can't believe AWS console still makes you globally switch on region for everything. Can't there just big a dashboard that lets you see and control, ya know, everything? It's things like that. Things that have been bad for a long time. Instead of pushing out redshift or cognitio or zocalo or workspaces or elastic transcoder, how about they make AWS as a whole a better product? Something easier to user. Something more consistent.
  - taeric 12y ago

martinnormark 12y ago

The awesome Brian Roemmele announced this on Quora two weeks ago: http://acceptingpayments.quora.com/Quora-News-Before-It-Happens-Amazon-To-Compete-Head-To-Head-With-Square http://acceptingpayments.quora.com/Quora-News-Before-It-Happ... Exciting times, to see what unfolds in this payment war. Apple will certainly get there soon: http://acceptingpayments.quora.com/Apple%E2%80%99s-iWallet-And-Retail-Payments-Plans-Have-Been-Exposed-In-A-New-Patent http://acceptingpayments.quora.com/Apple%E2%80%99s-iWallet-A... http://acceptingpayments.quora.com/Confirmed-Apple-iPhone-Event-On-September-9th-2014 http://acceptingpayments.quora.com/Confirmed-Apple-iPhone-Ev... http://acceptingpayments.quora.com/Apple-Patent-Shows-How-Passbook-Becomes-The-iWallet http://acceptingpayments.quora.com/Apple-Patent-Shows-How-Pa...

meritt 12y ago

I'm guessing the product roadmap looks something like: Point of Sale -> Inventory Management -> All of your physical inventory is also available for purchase on Amazon.com Brilliant.

minikomi 12y ago
All of Amazon's logistics for delivery / warehousing is available to you for a small fee..

knes 12y ago

In a typical Scorpion manner (http://www.feld.com/archives/2014/07/amazons-scorpion-problem.html http://www.feld.com/archives/2014/07/amazons-scorpion-proble...), they are going in for the kill.

chrisan 12y ago

Does anyone know the true bottom to transaction fees? Are they taking a loss at 1.75% to acquire user base?

PeterisP 12y ago
Large volume can get costs of infrastructure per transaction absurdly low; the true floor is the interchange rate that you pay to the card issuer; it depends on type of card but it can be ~1% for many of them. American express is much higher, taking amex at 1.75% is definitely a loss.
- ddispaltro 12y ago
  I've always wondered what kind of deal Costco did with American Express to make it the only accepted credit card. It's probably membership + exclusivity that allows AMEX to have much lower fraud and therefore pass on the savings to Costco.
jcampbell1 12y ago
I do know the "true bottom", but it is 200 pages of documents, and will depend on the mix of debit cards, Amex, and card levels such as Business/Signature/etc, and international, and average transaction amount. If you are interested Visa alone, then the latest fee schedule is here: http://usa.visa.com/download/merchants/Visa-Interchange-Reimbursement-Fees-April-2014.pdf http://usa.visa.com/download/merchants/Visa-Interchange-Reim... 1.45%-1.65% + $0.10 is a very common interchange for retail. The 1.75%+$0.00 pricing is going to be zero margin for them. If some merchant just uses Amazon for Amex, they will lose on that merchant. If the merchant primarily serves debit card customers, Amazon will make a small amount of money.
bhahn 12y ago
I'd assume so because the 1.75% is available for a limited-time only. The fine print mentions that the standard rates (after the promotional period) are 2.5% and 2.75%.

bambax 12y ago

This sounds a little like a joke. Amazon is the biggest competitor brick-and-mortar shops have ever seen; why would shops want to give that kind of information to Amazon, so that it knows in real time what people are buying outside of itself??? A coffeeshop, maybe, but for any other kind of business it sounds crazy.

deleted 12y ago
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itry 12y ago
Plus you will advertise Amazon with their logo on the device :-)
dminor 12y ago
1.75% is a huge discount.
- thejosh 12y ago
  It depends on your volume, i've seen a lot less with medium size volume.
- rickyc091 12y ago
  That on top of the next day money deposit is a real incentive.
  - pmorici 12y ago
    That is pretty common among modern payment processors, Square, Stripe, Bitpay, etc...
    - cbhl 12y ago
      Considering that consumers have months to make a chargeback, this is a relatively new thing in the payments industry (last few years). I suspect it'll make the horror stories that much worse when a small business owner has already spent the money that someone wants refunded.

jnardiello 12y ago

It's a trap. You, owner of a shop, don't do this. Amazon will first analyze all your sales data, they will than attach reviews to your shop and finally they will oblige you to play by their rules or die (banned or killed by bad reviews) and either way they will grow thanks to your hard work. I'm not joking, this is exactly what they have done (and keep doing) with "partners". Amazon is all but transparent and it has been growing like crazy during the last 6-8 years thanks to this exact strategy. Online is not enough anymore, they need to conquer local stores as well. The empire strikes back.

itry 12y ago
> they will than attach reviews to your shop They will come and stick reviews on your window or what?
- jnardiello 12y ago
  How they will implement reviews for local shops is speculation at this point, but yes. They will allow reviews for local shops and use them to influence buyers choosing where to cut their hairs or where to buy the best cakes.
antr 12y ago
I get your comment and agree with it, but... It's funny how us (the HN/startup/pro disruptive audience) is very pro change (let's get rid off the middle man because we can create software that can do this cheaper and more efficient) and now we are 'rooting' for the brick and mortar business. There is a sociological take away somewhere here.
- clamprecht 12y ago
  Change can be good, but it also matters who is "running" the change.
- gdulli 12y ago
  Some change/progress is good and some is bad and that doesn't seem like a subtle point. I don't know how anyone gets into the mindset of assuming change is inherently good or inherently bad.

happywolf 12y ago

In this game, one of the factors is frauds. The solution provider who is able to keep fraud rate under control will have an advantage.

thrownaway2424 12y ago
Right and those two players are google and apple. Phone-present transactions with strong authentication and irrefutability would be far cheaper to process. Google had been screwing the pooch for years with android wallet. They should have owned this market years ago.

LukeHoersten 12y ago

I can't sign up because all my amazon accounts are associated with other Amazon payment services? Is this an AWS thing?

nicholassmith 12y ago

Wow, talk about doing a deal with the devil. Amazon will just apply their standard rule book to the situation and choke the market, and use the data to make it easier to determine what markets are worth investing in for hyperlocal sales tools. It honestly seems like no good can come of this, it looks like a wonderful tool, but the risks? Eeesh.

gambiting 12y ago

What is it with swipe cards in the US? A lot of businesses in the EU don't take them due to security risks and only accept chip-and-pin payments,yet US parties like it's 1991?

aet 12y ago
We have drones and CC tv everywhere in U.S. monitoring your every move. So fraud not an issue.
PeterisP 12y ago
The fraud liability shift for swipe cards in USA will be at the end of 2015, so there's some time still left - but such a card reader definitely isn't futureproof, and they'll need a new model after a year or so.
- jessaustin 12y ago
  Can you provide any more information about this "fraud liability shift"? To whom is fraud liability shifting? By how much is it shifting? Why would such a shift concern Amazon? EDIT: TIL retailers will have more liability. I suspect Amazon will find a way to pass that on to the actual retailer. Changes like this have a way of getting delayed in USA, as well.
  - gambiting 12y ago
    Based on my experience with how EU shops approach swipe cards, the shift in the US is from the bank to the retailer, when it comes to responsibility for authorizing the transaction. At the moment in the EU it's trivial to go to a shop, pay with a swipe card, scribble something on the receipt(most people working at the till are not used to seeing swipe cards so they don't check signatures too well), call you bank saying you don't recognize the charge, they ask the merchant for the copy of the receipt, compare the signature with the one they have, and because they don't match they reverse the charge, leaving the merchant with no goods and no money. So most shops simply don't take swipe cards to stop fraud - with pin-and-chip cards banks cannot reverse payments from merchants, because it's the bank verifying the pin, not the merchant. My understanding is, that in the US banks cannot reverse payments to merchants,so no retailer has any problem with taking swipe cards, but if that responsibility changes, then merchants won't be happy to accept them anymore.

ape4 12y ago

Using the audio jack like Square. Isn't there a way yet to use digital like USB yet.

robin_reala 12y ago
Or alternatively Bluetooth. iZettle’s approach is a selfcontained chip+PIN device that communicates with the app on your smartphone wirelessly. The app then handles 3G connection. https://www.izettle.com/gb/card-readers https://www.izettle.com/gb/card-readers
- ape4 12y ago
  Of course, Bluetooth. It could still plug into the iPhone audio jack for stability.
  - robin_reala 12y ago
    I’ve used these devices before. Merchant facing functionality (e.g. entering prices) is on the phone side, customer facing functionality on the box. The customer never needs to touch the phone.
icebraining 12y ago
Using the audio jack allows them to make a very dumb, very cheap reader. All you need is a magnetic head (like those in cassette decks) and a maybe a couple of basic components. See the disassembly of the Square reader: http://cosmodro.me/blog/2011/mar/25/rhombus-square-iskewedi/ http://cosmodro.me/blog/2011/mar/25/rhombus-square-iskewedi/
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]

bowlofpetunias 12y ago

Ah, more 90's payment technology from the US. It's becoming a bit of a running joke. (Also, extremely annoying when you live in a city with lots of American tourists that think you can still pay that way in 2014.) Why on earth would you still develop new services for something that is so outdated and has been so completely broken and discredited even my 72 year old mother knows it's unsafe?

jessaustin 12y ago
Security is a process, dude. Chip'n'pin has had its issues as well. (Issues which in some jurisdictions have been passed on to consumers. Fun!) The marketing efforts have certainly been more successful in Europe than in USA, however. I guess maybe we'll just have to bring more cash, or perhaps maybe vacation in more enlightened locales.

jobu 12y ago

As a consumer, I'm hoping this makes it easier to find local services. There are a number of options, but none are great. Angie's List has mediocre search and an awkward interface. Craigslist can be great, but it's more often wading through a cesspool of spam and shady companies to find the few decent ones. Yelp seems to have pretty good reviews for restaurants, but not much else.

usaphp 12y ago

They did not even bother to create some unique design of a landing page [1], just copied it from SquareUp [2] -> PayPal [3] pages: 1. http://localregister.amazon.com/ http://localregister.amazon.com/ 2. https://squareup.com/ https://squareup.com/ 3. https://www.paypal.com/webapps/mpp/credit-card-reader https://www.paypal.com/webapps/mpp/credit-card-reader

bdcravens 12y ago
They're not that similar, aside from common UI elements seen all over the web, and showing the device and app. Honestly, the Square page looks like a typical theme you can buy on ThemeForest for less than $20
ceejayoz 12y ago
It should not be shocking that three identical products have to convey similar sets of information to prospective customers.

MadManE 12y ago

I think it's very interesting that the Amazon phone is not one of the supported devices for this.

deleted 12y ago
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bentcorner 12y ago
Although not unsurprising. Once corporations get large enough you get this sort of desynchronization. Maintaining product development secrecy while also ensuring internal teams have aligned goals can be difficult.
- MadManE 12y ago
  Very true. I think it just highlights some of the cracks in their armor, so to speak.

byandyphillips 12y ago

Did a 14 year old design this page? I thought Amazon had talented people working for them.

hyperliner 12y ago

Unfortunately, the reality is that small business and service providers will use this service because they won't realize that the long term implications of this Amazon move will work against them. For them, everything is short term (swipe fees, reporting, etc.), and when we are talking about the "future them" that is "someone else" 10 years from now. This is really the prisoner's dilemma with thousands and thousands of prisoners. Alternatively, it is the frog inside the boiling water. The frog never jumps out of the water. It just dies.

tomasien 12y ago

1.75% limited of time offer makes me want to vomit. The one thing I like about Square is at least they're not like other CC processors that make the careers HIDING fees from their merchants. Now Amazon is coming out the gate doing this. Many of us are fighting these fees online - even the CC processors like Stripe are at least straightforward with their fees even if they're forced to make them higher than they'd like - but it looks like for in person swipes we're stuck with the status quo.

twistedpair 12y ago
> 1.75% limited of time offer makes me want to vomit. So Amzn should offer a lower rate, free perhaps? Or are they hiding fees somewhere else? Please you explain your aversion more.
- tomasien 12y ago
  It's temporary - they're making it seem like it's lower than it is. They're going to lock people in and then jack up the rate - it's classic CC processing trick and it's BULLSHIT. Even if the real price is written somewhere, it's still horseshit.
  - rvn1045 12y ago
    Can you name a significant number of instances where Amazon has not lowered prices over a medium to long term period? Amazon has consistently made things inexpensive for the consumer. Sometimes even taking losses to ensure that customers get a lower price.
    - tomasien 12y ago
      This is my point - y'all aren't even reading what Amazon is saying! They're LITERALLY going to raise the price to 2.5% - it's on the page! It's actually spelled out "we are going to raise our prices".
  - badusername 12y ago

rb2k_ 12y ago

I'm interested to see how the "manufactured spent / churning" crowd will use this. There are credit cards with 2% (fidelity amex) or 2.2% (barlays arrival plus) cashback out there. Having a 1.75% fee on this will probably have some of them experiment :) I'm sure Amazon will shut that down, but I'd love to see how much spent people can run up before that happens.

_mayo 12y ago
Wouldn't that be considered fraud? Since you'd be defrauding Amex (genuinely curious).
- rb2k_ 12y ago
  Amex still gets their swiping fee from Amazon, I don't think they care particularly much. I would assume Amazon just swallows the possible loss. (hence: introductory rate)

jseip 12y ago

I don't get this. Seems like a late entry into a saturated and (at least in Square's case) not that lucrative market. Any insight into why you would do this?

bstpierre 12y ago
Amazon already has all the infrastructure to deal with this, they can quickly achieve volume to build the readers at low cost (and take a loss in basically giving them away). Small shop owners are more likely to be familiar with the amazon brand versus square or others so their marketing/promotion is easier. Amazon very likely has tons of ways they can use the data they collect. They have opportunities for upsell: shops can buy ads, integrate with amazon on their website, start selling on amazon, etc. (speculation) Amazon sees threats from other competitors in this space, so they want to suck all the profit out of it. Note also that the business owner can spend funds on amazon immediately, or wait for funds to arrive in a bank account the next day. So amazon has a chance for extra sales there. I wonder if there's also a financial angle -- it says funds get deposited the next day, so it doesn't seem like amazon has a chance to sit on the funds for any length of time, but maybe there's some angle I'm not seeing.
chippy 12y ago
Amazon also has other services to shops and vendors.
potatolicious 12y ago
Saturated but most players are unprofitable. Amazon has an infinite well of money to not only out-price the competition but sustain a loss for long enough that the competition might actually die. Amazon also makes revenue off of attached services to merchants (Fulfillment by Amazon, the webstore, etc). This is part of the reason why Square has been trying to buy up merchant value-add companies.

fataliss 12y ago

Well one more blow to Square, hope they gonna make it through 2014 but the more I see the less I hope :/

sparkman55 12y ago

Another card reader that plugs into the audio port. I'd like to include one of these card readers into my own mobile app; has anyone had success using an SDK for integration? CardFlight seems like it would work, but it's a bit expensive...

jessaustin 12y ago

I guess maybe it saves some on TLS processing, but it's lame that I have to click through two screens to even start signing up. Especially since I'm already signed into Amazon!

mk00 12y ago

Goodnight square.

ig1 12y ago

People seem to be very confused at to who the target market is here. This isn't about bricks-and-mortar retailers switching to use Amazon as a payment mechanism, it's about providing a payment services for the (largely) local service vendors who sell their services via Amazon Local (Amazon's daily deal platform). Powering the payments system will give Amazon the data to do far more dynamic pricing (something which they have a lot of expertise in) for their vendors on Amazon Local which is a win for both the vendors and Amazon.

hullo 12y ago

Interesting to consider in tandem with AmazonSupply - a much bigger play for businesses, and one you hear very very little about. You can (and I'm sure they'd prefer that you do) use your Amazon Local Register proceeds to buy most of what you need to run your business. (Leaving aside restaurants/cafes – outside of AmazonFresh delivery markets anyway.) http://www.amazonsupply.com/ http://www.amazonsupply.com/ Forbes had a pretty extensive look a couple months back, the only big public airing it's gotten - http://www.forbes.com/sites/clareoconnor/2014/05/07/amazons-wholesale-slaughter-jeff-bezos-8-trillion-b2b-bet/ http://www.forbes.com/sites/clareoconnor/2014/05/07/amazons-...

chippy 12y ago

Would this would turn Amazon into a bank?

brazzledazzle 12y ago
They haven't gone after PayPal yet right?

lauradhamilton 12y ago

Seems like quite a low rate. I hope they have a good team/plan for anti-fraud, because merchant fraud is a different beast from e-tail fraud...

whitenoise 12y ago

[1]"Make sure the microphone on your device is turned on". I am not familiar with the card reader hardware. Why is a microphone needed for processing a credit card swipe? [1] - http://localregister.amazon.com/help/201549190/swiping-a-card http://localregister.amazon.com/help/201549190/swiping-a-car...

crazy1van 12y ago
I believe it plugs into the audio jack. The device captures a swipe as audio data as if it were a microphone and the software interprets the audio as magnetic stripe data.
burnte 12y ago
The reader inputs the data from the magstripe as audio data. The data on the stripe can be interpreted as audio data, and it is, piped in via the microphone part of the TRRS connector on the reader, just like your headset.

skywhopper 12y ago

"Pricing you can trust" rarely comes along with "LOW LOW PRICES IF YOU COMMIT NOW!" In fact, the combination of these two concepts in one ad campaign should double-red-flag this "opportunity".

mmanfrin 12y ago

Congrats to (my ex coworkers) the old GoPago team for rebuilding with Amazon!

gventures 12y ago

We sold them the localregister.com platform over 12 months ago after 7 years of development. They are going to crush it as they have with scale, speed and everything that makes amazon, amazon. It helped put our Contrib, Domain Holdings and Global Ventures companies into a great position with future integration of our customers using the currency movement system. They will eventually integrate across all platforms quickly starting with localregister.com. Gotta love competition, makes our world great

gventures 12y ago

LocalRegister.com to amazon was a great transaction for our team at Domain Holdings and Global Ventures. We are glad we can finally analyze this transaction and show others how key your url asset is and the potential technology and business models still to come for the domain channel.. Check out Contrib or BidTellect, two other up and coming platforms in good hands with big announcements soon.

gventures 12y ago

980% ROI in 7 years on localregister.com investment, finally I made money from Amazon verses spending it with them.

badusername 12y ago

How is Amazon able to offer such low rates when the VISA/MasterCard/Amex processing charges are themselves higher than that?

guiambros 12y ago

This is not (only) about putting local retailers out of business; it's about conquering consumer's wallet. In fact it'd be better for them if (most) of Amazon Local users do not go out of business. Having access to consumer spend outside their platform would give Amazon an incredible leverage. They'd be able to understand where else you're spending your money, which would allow all sorts of revenue streams: up-selling, cross-selling, Amazon Deals, advertising revenue, selling the raw data to data management platforms (e.g., BluaKai). They already do something similar with Amazon Payments, but it's mostly for online merchants. This can go much further, even to industries that they have no interest in entering. If you're paying a plumber or a painter, you may be interested in decoration. If you're buying a bicycle, you may need a helmet. Buy some baby clothes, and you may be expecting, and the perfect target for Amazon Mom (I hate this name; why not Amazon Baby, or Amazon Parents?). And let's not forget about the revenue coming from selling your data and your cookies, which they already do with advertising partners. While banks and card issuers have been doing this for decades, they are typically clueless about how to reach to consumers other than via direct mail, or co-branded email catalogs. And matching PII and databases is something that the FTC doesn't like much. It's brilliant move for them.