A report at TechCrunch indicates that Amazon (AMZN) will launch on online payment service to compete with Ebay (EBAY) PayPal and Google (GOOG) Checkout. TechCrunch writes users will be "redirected to Amazon’s servers to complete the payment and then returned to the original site."
Amazon’s size in the e-commerce market makes the report believable. It ranks seventh among US internet sites in terms of unique visitors with 53.3 million in June, just behind Ebay’s 81.2 million uniques.
Google’s Checkout has not been able to take much share from Ebay, but Google is obviously not primarily an e-commerce site. Amazon is and its has relationships to provide infrastructure to a number of other web properties. It could market the service to these clients as well as its own retail customers. That makes it a real threat to PayPal.
Douglas A. McIntyre
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