Amazon Cash

Feels more like a grass-roots mechanism to give interest free loans to Amazon :-)...you park money with Amazon until you buy something from them. Gift cards too seem to do the same thing, but I guess there is more cost to Amazon with Gift cards.

> by purchasing and automatically claiming an Amazon.com Gift Card to your account

https://www.amazon.com/b/ref=?node=14720158011 (nice URL)

There is a EDIT: significant portion [0] of the population of the united states that is unbanked or underbanked and not able or willing to obtain credit cards. This goes a long way into opening up a new market segment and/or allowing for cash to be used to pay for goods generally as local retailers may not carry the same diversity of products.

[0]https://www.fdic.gov/householdsurvey/

This is basically amazon gift cards, but instead of typing in the code on the back after purchasing they are automatically added to your account at the time of purchase.

Additionally this isn't aimed at people that have credit/debit cards. This is for people that are using cash for nearly everything. They take their paycheck to a check cashing place, and pay all their bills with cash, cashiers checks, or money orders. Currently the only way for them to shop on amazon is to buy gift cards at a local store for cash then add them to their account. This cuts out extra garbage and an extra step.

I imagine that it's the same use case as buying gift cards for yourself with cash. If you don't have a credit card and you need to buy something online, you'd do it by buying yourself a gift card. This appears to be the same thing except they don't make you type in the gift card number.

Many people don't use banking services at all. It's pretty common to cash a paycheck and then manage a weekly or monthly budget by dividing up the cash into "accounts" -- put this much aside for rent, this goes away into my rainy day stash, this is what I'll use for groceries, etc. People do it for many reasons, but usually it's a combination of bad credit, distrust of banks, or distrust of themselves if they take advantage of credit. It could also be that it's unreported income, of course. So, with this product, Amazon gives cash-first or cash-only people a way to buy things online.

Lots of people[citation needed] still like to pay for things in cash. I hang around a fair amount of Dave Ramsey fans, so my view might be skewed here. But, by way of example in another industry, I know that's one of the many sticking points for Stallman with ride sharing - taxis at least let you pay cash.

This is surprising, it might not get a lot of traction, and I don't know what these partners are getting out of the deal (apart from maybe the extra candy bar purchase at the counter), but I'm tentatively glad that it exists. More ways to pay cash, particularly in the tech industry, is a good thing.

EDIT: If your goal of paying cash is to cut out Visa/MasterCard/Discover/AmEx and not buy things on credit, this works. Better than a gift card too, because you don't spend $23 and feel like you have to do something with those last two dollars. But if you're looking to avoid being tracked, this has to hurt your cause.

Except for the fact that nobody in their right mind should be buying Bitcoin with the intent of using it to buy goods and services (with the possible sole exemption of goods and services you hope to attain over the internet anonymously).

Not only is there no real advantage to buying anything else with Bitcoin versus a credit card, but the downsides are astronomical: forgetting a password, getting a virus, or keeping your currency on an exchange gets hacked can result in irrevocably losing every Bitcoin you own.

As someone who is bullish on cryptocurrencies, I don't understand how anyone can think that their properties are suitable for use as a form of money by the general public.