Amazon has been offering 3rd parties to login and pay with their Amazon accounts for around a year now. The Seattle based company has quietly introduced a new feature that may play into the new phone they are going to announce in the next few weeks.
Amazon currently has over 240 million active users that have their credit card details stored in the Amazon system. The new program will allow customers to pay for services such as a monthly phone bill or a digital music subscription. Amazon then charges a fee on each transaction.
Amazon getting into the recurring subscription arena will certainly contend with PAYPAL, who dominates this medium. The big downside about Paypal is that they are not crowdfunding friendly and tends to hold and freeze funds indiscriminately, sometimes making people wait six months to see their money restored. One benefit to Kindle Fire and Kindle e-Reader customers is that you can take out a digital newspaper or magazine subscription and pay by the month. Â It will also allow you to pay for services such as Pandora, Spotify or Beats on a monthly basis.
In the next few weeks Amazon is poised to reveal their smartphone that has 3D elements and many cameras. Many industry experts are agreeing that you might be able to pay your phone bill using the new Amazon subscription system. Instead of paying the phone company in the traditional sense, you would be throwing down with Amazon to simplify your life and keep all of your purchases in one place.
Michael Kozlowski is the editor-in-chief at Good e-Reader and has written about audiobooks and e-readers for the past fifteen years. Newspapers and websites such as the CBC, CNET, Engadget, Huffington Post and the New York Times have picked up his articles. He Lives in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.