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258 points polyrand | 1 comments | | HN request time: 0.219s | source
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vishnugupta ◴[] No.34491814[source]
I worked on Amazon Payments systems for quite some time back in the day. We took pride in being the best payment processors. Had direct connections with card networks, banks and what not. We even launched a PayPal competitor[1]. They launched a Square like device for physical retailers[2]. They invested some serious money in building and maintaining all of that.

However going by this news seems like Amazon has more or less given up on their payments ambitions. Could be also due to recent layoffs. This is a big news. Maybe Amazon wants to focus on being good at few things instead of running hundreds of experiments.

Edit: References.

[1] https://pay.amazon.com

[2] https://www.forbes.com/sites/ryanmac/2015/10/30/amazon-kills...

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strgcmc ◴[] No.34494441[source]
As another former Amazonian (but not near payments stuff by any means), judging from the outside, this doesn't sound like it equates to the death of Amazon Payments at all.

The PR statements are very carefully worded to say, strategic partner that will be "processing a significant portion of Amazon’s total payments volume." If significant portion was going to mean anywhere near 100%, I'm sure Stripe would have shouted that fact from the rooftops even louder (what a huge win that would be!).

For my money, this really just reads like mostly a quid-pro-quo deal, you give me X% of payments volume, I'll give you Y level of commitment to AWS. With no insider knowledge of any kind, I would wildly speculate that "significant portion" could mean a value of X as low as 5-10%.

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1. argc ◴[] No.34495449[source]
Amazon is ok with internal competition, so this could just be a way of keeping options open while locking in a large customer. Maybe Stripe is better in some markets or verticals but Amazon will still rely on Amazon Payments for others. Long term there could still be a convergence on one or the other. (Amazonian but this is complete guesswork)