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It'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 brea

It'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 ago
I 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 ago
Square 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 ago
Is 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 ago
    So, they'd have to, you know... actually have revenue in excess of their expenditures? Shocking!
  - nostrademons 12y ago
    I 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...
    - bellerocky 12y ago
      > If you follow Steve Blank's Lean Startup thought process I know an engineer who works at Square, they are not a lean startup, they have all the various excesses that people love to hate which is expensive catering, free shit, expensive furnishings. Square is not lean, and when you're losing $100,000,000 a year, I don't care if you're an ancient business like Ford or IBM, that's not good, and you wont have 7 years to reach profitability profitability, you got about half that, if you don't hire anymore. If Square stops hiring, that's also not good. They're going to have to let people go, like their recruiting operation, which is world class.
- sdrothrock 12y ago
  > I've actually been seeing it a lot more recently Me, too. I live in Japan and it blew me away when I saw Square readers for smartphones in convenience stores the other day.
skaushik92 12y ago
Now 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...

It'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 ago

I 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 ago

Square 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 ago

Is 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 ago
  So, they'd have to, you know... actually have revenue in excess of their expenditures? Shocking!
- nostrademons 12y ago
  I 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...
  - bellerocky 12y ago
    > If you follow Steve Blank's Lean Startup thought process I know an engineer who works at Square, they are not a lean startup, they have all the various excesses that people love to hate which is expensive catering, free shit, expensive furnishings. Square is not lean, and when you're losing $100,000,000 a year, I don't care if you're an ancient business like Ford or IBM, that's not good, and you wont have 7 years to reach profitability profitability, you got about half that, if you don't hire anymore. If Square stops hiring, that's also not good. They're going to have to let people go, like their recruiting operation, which is world class.
sdrothrock 12y ago
> I've actually been seeing it a lot more recently Me, too. I live in Japan and it blew me away when I saw Square readers for smartphones in convenience stores the other day.

skaushik92 12y ago

Now 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...