5 ms·

> We’ve worked with Amazon Payments from the very beginning of Kickstarter — a year before we launched, in fact. They’ve been an excellent partner, processing $

by kposehn 12y ago

> We’ve worked with Amazon Payments from the very beginning of Kickstarter — a year before we launched, in fact. They’ve been an excellent partner, processing $1 billion in pledges. Late last year Amazon decided to discontinue the payments product that we have used. Killing a payments product that racked up $1bn+ in payments boggles my mind. That is a level of profit to /keep/ a product, come what may.

TazeTSchnitzel 12y ago
Income isn't profit. Amazon probably only earn a small fraction of that.
NhanH 12y ago
$1b+ in payment was processed, which is far and much different than $1b+ in profit. We don't know what the margin is on that.
- math0ne 12y ago
  If you cant find a way to make money on a billion dollars going though your service you are doing something wrong...
  - asb 12y ago
    Presumably the feature that is being discontinued is for authorising payments that aren't actually taken until later in the future. I could certainly imagine this has a disproportionately high support cost.
dragonwriter 12y ago
> Killing a payments product that racked up $1bn+ in payments boggles my mind. That is a level of profit to /keep/ a product, come what may. Processing $1 billion in payments doesn't tell you anything about what the profits were. If the fees on those billion in payments weren't enough to cover the costs, it could still have been a loss, and even if it was profitable, it may have been only just barely so.
InclinedPlane 12y ago
$1 billion transactions, 5% of that in fees, so $50 million in fees. Minus maybe $30 million in cost of payments (credit card transaction fees) which amazon eats, that only leaves maybe $20 million. Out of which amazon ends up having to handle a lot of bullshit like chargebacks, fraud issues, etc, which further erodes their profit down to a fraction of that $20 million. Meanwhile, amazon.com retail earns probably $20 million an hour during the day, give or take.

by kposehn 12y ago

TazeTSchnitzel 12y ago

Income isn't profit. Amazon probably only earn a small fraction of that.

NhanH 12y ago

$1b+ in payment was processed, which is far and much different than $1b+ in profit. We don't know what the margin is on that.

math0ne 12y ago
If you cant find a way to make money on a billion dollars going though your service you are doing something wrong...
- asb 12y ago
  Presumably the feature that is being discontinued is for authorising payments that aren't actually taken until later in the future. I could certainly imagine this has a disproportionately high support cost.

dragonwriter 12y ago

> Killing a payments product that racked up $1bn+ in payments boggles my mind. That is a level of profit to /keep/ a product, come what may. Processing $1 billion in payments doesn't tell you anything about what the profits were. If the fees on those billion in payments weren't enough to cover the costs, it could still have been a loss, and even if it was profitable, it may have been only just barely so.

InclinedPlane 12y ago

$1 billion transactions, 5% of that in fees, so $50 million in fees. Minus maybe $30 million in cost of payments (credit card transaction fees) which amazon eats, that only leaves maybe $20 million. Out of which amazon ends up having to handle a lot of bullshit like chargebacks, fraud issues, etc, which further erodes their profit down to a fraction of that $20 million. Meanwhile, amazon.com retail earns probably $20 million an hour during the day, give or take.