[asterisk-users] Amazon Flexible Payment System - micropayments finally cracked?

[Dean Collins]

First posted at:
http://deancollinsblog.blogspot.com/2009/02/amazon-flexible-payment-syst
em.html

 

 

 

Amazon have just announced they are finally opening up their API's to
their credit card processing platform
https://payments-sandbox.amazon.com/sdui/sdui/business?sn=devfps/o

So does this mean that micropayments have finally been cracked?

It certainly helps out users because you can easily process a
transaction without entering in credit card details (it uses the credit
card details you have stored on your Amazon account) and for content
providers the transaction fees are finally reasonable to low cost
content access.

For Transactions >= $10:
1.5% + $0.01 for Amazon Payments balance transfers
2.0% + $0.05 for bank account debits
2.9% + $0.30 for credit card transactions. 

More importantly For Transactions < $10:
1.5% + $0.01 for Amazon Payments balance transfers
2.0% + $0.05 for bank account debits
5.0% + $0.05 for credit card 


So lets say you want to sell a 24 hour access pass to your cartoon
library content for 20c, that's a pretty reasonable charge for the
consumer.

Up until now this transaction would not have been possible as the access
fees would have been eaten up in transaction costs.

But using the Amazon FPS your fees would be ($0.20 x 5%) + $0.05= $0.06
This means the content provider would receive $0.14 for selling this 24
hour limited access license.

I don't know about you but that's probably way more than what they would
have made in click throughs or display advertising.

There are some issues in that it requires a USA based credit card for
content providers to collect money (hopefully this is a temporary issue
for offshore web content providers) but it doesn't look like there are
any requirements for incorporation in the USA or IRS tax collection
issues.

 

The API's are well documented and easy enough for any competent web
developer to get you started with under a few hours of development work.

What do you think?

Post your comments on the blog if you think this could change how you do
some of your business.



 

Regards,

Dean Collins
Cognation Inc
dean at cognation.net
<mailto:dean at cognation.net> +1-212-203-4357   New York
+61-2-9016-5642   (Sydney in-dial).
+44-20-3129-6001 (London in-dial).

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