Hacker News Reader

Amazon FPS claims to enable interaccount transfers. Do they take care of the legal requirements?

Amazon probably does a lot more to identify the people using it than would be practical for TipJoy. It's certainly not illegal to do transfers, it's just asking for trouble to do so without knowing who both parties are. That could pose a serious problem for someone like TipJoy who is all about ease of use.

I'm sure they'll find a way.

The account identification routines were a big part of what sunk egold as well. If you can't positively identify the owner of an account, then you are on the hook for illegal scams and money laundering activities. It's ugly.

Yes, they do. That's why Buxfer could use Amazon FPS for enabling person-to-person transfers, but we couldn't use PayPal, or do it ourselves.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com