Amazon might still be working away on its far-out delivery drone project, but it’s also reportedly cooking up something else, admittedly a little tamer, too: a Kindle checkout system and a P2P payment service. Yes, the former’s exactly what it sounds like, a Kindle tablet equipped with proprietary software and a credit card reader. Amazon supposedly acquired GoPago in 2013 to nudge this venture forward, though TechCrunch says it’s not the only payment solution the firm’s developing.
Earlier today, the WSJ published a report on how Amazon is building a Kindle-based point-of-sale payments service for local merchants using technology it picked up via its Gopago acquisition –something we actually reported on back in December. In fact, this looks like just part of what Amazon has in mind. The e-commerce giant is also developing a solution for person-to-person payments — bypassing banks and other payment networks — putting it in even closer competition with P2P payment giant PayPal. The P2P payment system, as it’s being conceived, would have a mobile component to it, and it would be cloud-based, so presumably usable over desktop, too.