[michaelt]

Isn't Paypal just another middleman between the retailer and the banks?

I mean, Paypal is all very well for a small site where customers don't trust you with their card details or you're not doing enough volume to get a decent merchant account - but neither of those applies to Amazon.

Paypal will want a bigger cut than Amazon's existing credit card processors. So why would Amazon want to use Paypal?

[foldor]

PayPal allows people who don't have a credit card to make purchases online. Many people in European countries don't have a credit card for example. Accepting PayPal is an easy alternative to supporting all of the different payment methods that you might need to meet certain regions expectations.

[Mvandenbergh]

Amazon accepts debit cards and other payment methods in those countries though. For a company of Amazon's scale, supporting different payment methods across European borders is not the challenge that it would be for a small business.

[VLM]

The existing marketplace solution for that is prepaid credit cards, essentially gift certs that can be redeemed by being run as a credit card. Teens use them to shop online, or at least my kids do.

There is also limited liability with prepaid CCs, no matter what happens you can't be out more than the value of the CC, but you can get into considerable financial trouble with paypal WRT overdrafts and overdraft fees and bounced check fees ... its just not worth it unless you're well disciplined.

[icebraining]

Not sure how widespread it is, but here in Portugal banks offer a service that allows you to create virtual CCs tied to your bank account. You just set a limit (in €) and it returns all the CC info needed to make a payment.

[SEJeff]

Bank of America has the exact same thing.

https://www.bankofamerica.com/privacy/accounts-cards/shopsaf...

[ericcope]

do any other banks have this?

[dkarapetyan]

Chase.

[SEJeff]

Really? Where? I've been a chase customer since they bought BankOne in ~2006 and haven't seen this.

[ghshephard]

Anybody who doesn't have a credit card can't buy from Amazon (easily) right now, even if you have a paypal account. Given that EBay and Amazon are direct competitors in the retail space, it made good sense not to share purchasing/sales information with Paypal.

Once Paypal and EBay are separate entities, Amazon now can reasonably enter into a merchant agreement with Paypal.

I don't buy into the Amazon/Paypal being competitors - while in theory this is true, Amazon has far more to gain by accepting paypal customers, than it has to lose by not winning the online payment business.

[abritishguy]

Put your money where your mouth is, I will bet £100 that this won't happen.

[phlakaton]

How about, for the same reason credit card processors accept multiple credit card networks? PayPal is a pretty well-known payment brand now, and some people prefer to pay with it. It doesn't have to completely displace every other payment method Amazon offers to be worth a look.