Amazon takes on PayPal and others with launch of Amazon Payments partner program

By Sarah Perez for techcrunch

Amazon announced this morning a plan to spread adoption of its payments service, Amazon Payments, to more third-party websites. With the launch of its Amazon Payments Global Partner Program, the retailer will help e-commerce platform providers and other developers integrate with Amazon Payments so their own merchants can offer the option to “Pay with Amazon” at checkout.

Already, Amazon Payments can be used by individual merchants who can choose to integrate the company’s tools, like “Login and Pay with Amazon,” in order to offer an easy way for online shoppers to authenticate with their Amazon account information on a third-party website, then pay for their purchases with the credit card information they have on file with Amazon.

The idea here is that merchants could tap into Amazon’s already sizable user base, and then eliminate the need for these customers to create a separate username and password on the merchant’s website. And by making checkout quicker, merchants could increase conversions and boost sales.

With the new Global Partner program, however, the goal is to offer an expanded set of services to e-commerce platform providers themselves, instead of just individuals merchants. At launch, a number of partners have agreed to integrate with Amazon Payments, and then offer that option to their own merchants and sellers, including PrestaShop, Shopify, and Future Shop, for example.

As partners, these businesses will be able to take advantage of a variety of services that include things like white glove integration, account management, planning support, technical resources and training, and more. They’ll also be listed in a Partner directory, and some may also be eligible for co-marketing activities, says Amazon.

The specific services and benefits will be determined by the partner’s status, which falls under one of three tiers: Premier Partner, Certified Partner, and Certified Developer. The program is currently in an invite-only status in the U.S., Germany, U.K. and Japan.

The news was announced at the Money 2020 event in Copenhagen by way of a release.

The move is a clear signal from Amazon that it intends to ramp up its competition with other payment service providers, like PayPal, Visa, Apple Pay, and others, on the wider web. (Apple Pay is rumored to be coming to mobile websites this year.)

This expansion also comes at a time when Amazon Payments has seen a surge in growth and adoption. Re-launched in 2013 after years of experiments in the area of online payments, Amazon said this January that transaction volume had grown 150 percent last year over the year prior, and average orders were around $84. Merchants using Pay with Amazon also grew by 200 percent in 2015, but the retailer didn’t provide hard numbers.

However, Amazon is able to continue on this same path, it could prove to be a notable threat to its competitors in the months ahead. The company has 285 million account holders, and some 23 million-plus have now used their accounts on non-Amazon websites.

First appeared at techcrunch.com