Amazon Quietly Launches Its Consumer-Facing Mobile Wallet App, Amazon Wallet | Hacker News Reader

Amazon Quietly Launches Its Consumer-Facing Mobile Wallet App, Amazon Wallet

techcrunch.com

27 pointsghobs9111 comments

Is it just me or is Amazon launching new services at an exponentially faster clip these days? In my mind, they're really starting to separate themselves from the other tech powerhouses in terms of integrated innovation.

I sort of had the same feeling ... esp since they JUST released Zocalo on the enterprise side of things

yeh but does anyone here think Zocalo is going to go anywhere?

It COULD but they're entering a very competitive space. Profits are almost non-existent thanks to Microsoft and Google's race to the bottom.

I don't feel like Amazon did a good job selling their USP. I still don't know why I should buy it over the alternatives...

Reminds me of the Yahoo of the early 00's that wanted to be everything for everyone.

If you think about it, the two companies with the largest amounts of credit card #s on file would likely be Amazon, for obvious reasons, and Apple, because of iTunes.

Because using their payment platforms wouldn't involve the friction of having to add that info, those two stand to gain traction very quickly if they enter the space. Apple is rumored to be working on this, and so it's a no brainer for Amazon to do the same. My guess is that Amazon is waiting to see whether iBeacon or NFC end up winning before adding payments to the app.

is there a reason a storeowner wouldn't have to be out of his or her mind to accept amazon wallet? Amazon already actively cannibalizes sales of merchants on their platform by figuring out what sells best and sourcing their own products to compete. Now a storeowner would be telling amazon who their customers are (particularly their valuable ones) and maybe even leaking what they're buying.

I don't understand why anyone would possibly use this over square, whose ambitions don't include competing directly with the storeowner.

Maybe a merchant who mostly sells through Amazon anyway and who also has one or two physical stores?

Mobile wallets are definitely going to become more popular as a day by day tool. With Coin startup and bit coins, digital currency is on the rise.

This and similar apps would be a lot more useful if more places had Starbucks-style optical scanners instead of the traditional barcode readers. As it is, even some companies that have Passbook integration or official in-app barcodes don't actually have scanners rolled out that can read a phone screen.

How is the Starbucks scanner different from a traditional barcode reader?

From the looks of it, the Starbucks app + iOS passbook integration uses a regular barcode.

Different hardware. Traditional laser scanners of the sort still used by many companies can't read off a phone screen.

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