Show HN: AmberExpress - order any product on your mobile device with just 2 taps | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: AmberExpress - order any product on your mobile device with just 2 taps

blog.amber.io

49 pointssradu12 comments

Fantastic idea and fantastic hack (OnDemand VPN) to enable the banner. Two questions:

1. Do you store the bank card, address, etc. locally or on your servers?

2. Do you worry about Apple / Google replicating the functionality of this service? Seems like one of those ideas that's super clever, but really leaves me wishing it was just baked in.

We store the shipping/payment info if you create an account. The idea behind it is that entering information on mobile is a hassle and with amberExpress you enter it once and then it works across all stores.

During the summer we went through the PCI DSS process. PCI DSS is a standard for secure handling of credit card data. This means we have to abide by a very strict set of rules of storage/usage.

At the same time, if you don't have an account all your information is volatile and disappears after the order is placed.

When it comes to 2, the truth is we wish it was baked in too. That's why we implemented it the way we did. All we can do / focus on is on building an amazing service.

Thanks for the nice words btw :)

Very nice hack with the OnDemand VPN, would have never guessed something like that exists in iOS. Also like the idea of amber.io, impressive number of retailers already on board! Would love to hear from people using the API about their experience.

Keep on hacking!

The OnDemand VPN hack is pretty cool -- I'm left wondering how/if this can be transferred to Android? Is it any harder because third party browsers are much more prevalent on Android?

According to this: https://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=25843 iOS is the only platform that does VPN OnDemand.

I have to look into making it work on Android, I'm sure there are ways to get it working, but it will probably be a different approach than iOS.

One of the cofounders here, we're quite chatty so feel free to reach out :)

Who else is doing the same :)? Competitors?

As far as we know this is currently the only B2C approach built on top of an API that can place orders on ecommerce websites.

Very clever. It's Amazon-style checkout for any retail site.

This is one hell of a service :)

Thanks for the support!

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