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I wish they'd try harder with their payments business - they could be in a position to compete with Stripe or Paypal but instead force users to pay with their A
by iLoch 12y ago
I wish they'd try harder with their payments business - they could be in a position to compete with Stripe or Paypal but instead force users to pay with their Amazon accounts. That doesn't make sense as a business strategy to me.
- S4M 12y agoWouldn't that be a blatant abuse of dominant position?
- jamesaguilar 12y agoIf they had any monopolies, as interpreted by the us government, that could be an issue.
- bellerocky 12y agoIt's interesting you didn't mention Square, I think a sign of how much Square has fallen. Two years ago payment and Square were often mentioned in the same breath around here.
- iLoch 12y agoI just opted to mention Stripe and Paypal because PayPal is still the dominant force overall, and Stripe has the kind of API that developers love - a combination that Amazon is capable of creating.
- hmsimha 12y agoSquare is primarily focused on working with brick & mortar vendors to accept physical credit card payments. Stripe and Paypal are solutions for individuals, businesses, and retailers to accept payments online. I think iLoch was suggesting Amazon should compete on the latter front.
- djur 12y agoIs Square not doing well? I've actually been seeing it a lot more recently -- lots of food carts and street vendors do the iPad-and-cardreader setup, and I've seen a number of the POS systems in coffee shops and the like. I've also noticed cab drivers using it. I'm not seeing people use it for splitting bills and the like as much, but I got the impression Square was making a conscious shift away from that market and toward small brick-and-mortar (or truck-and-van?) businesses.
- bellerocky 12y ago> Is Square not doing well? Square reached too high a valuation off of low value business with merchants. They have burned through staggering amounts of cash, canceled high profiled products, and purchased payment-unrelated startups and made other changes. The high valuation they've had in funding rounds makes them an unattractive purchase because the business they have isn't worth what it would cost. To get new money they'd have to do something like foursquare did to raise money, which dilutes everyone's current equity to very little. They probably can turn it into some kind of business but the growth has stalled, the equity employees have is at risk and they've all but lost the sparkle that excites the press when they talk about the company. They could gain momentum back, it's not impossible, and they have really, really good engineers and designers so that's a plus.
- stevenbedrick 12y agoSo, they'd have to, you know... actually have revenue in excess of their expenditures? Shocking!
- nostrademons 12y agoI don't believe this. Looking up recent "Square should panic" articles [1][2], it seems they have about $350M cash on $100M/year losses, so roughly 3.5 years of runway left. The key point about Square's business is that they're in a new market. Their primary users are small businesses that would not otherwise be able to accept credit cards. I just bought a bottle of vodka directly from a distillery using Square: they had no cash register, no front office, you walk up to the door and the guys who run it will sell you a bottle on an iPad. Last Christmas, I bought our Christmas tree directly from a family-owned tree farm in the Santa Cruz mountains using Square. I paid for Maker Faire with Square. If you follow Steve Blank's Lean Startup thought process, new markets take an average of 7 years to reach profitability. It's not just a matter of convincing customers to switch; you have to wait for people to enter the new lines of business that you have made possible. That's finally starting to happen for Square: I see people on HN down on it, but I talk to their actual customers, the ones who pay money for it, and they are all very happy with it. [1] http://www.forbes.com/sites/stevenbertoni/2014/04/21/why-square-needs-to-sell-itself-and-do-it-quickly/ http://www.forbes.com/sites/stevenbertoni/2014/04/21/why-squ... [2] http://fortune.com/2014/05/14/squares-status-its-complicated/ http://fortune.com/2014/05/14/squares-status-its-complicated...
- skaushik92 12y agoNow that Amazon's competing in that space as well (http://localregister.amazon.com/ http://localregister.amazon.com/) I wonder how Square will leverage their userbase...
- untog 12y agoWell, if they were a payment provider they might end up providing services to their competitors. Maybe they don't want to give away a single benefit.