A freshly published patent filing with the United States Patent and Trademark Office this week suggests that Amazon's next big product release may not be a refreshed Kindle tablet, smartphone, or widely rumored "smartwatch." Instead, the online retail behemoth appears poised to enter the mobile payments arena.
Despite Amazon's gargantuan influence on retail and its equally massive cash reserves, some industry analysts believe that Amazon may be too late to the party to wield a significant impact on the mobile payments industry.
"No one is telling Amazon what they can or can't do in technology," says independent business analyst and mobile technology expert Mike Randazzo. "But it’s going to be exceedingly difficult for even Amazon to catch up to PayAnywhere, Square, and GoPayment, the biggest leaders in this space today."
"Amazon senses a huge opportunity in the market and they're obviously going to give it a try," Randazzo adds, noting that success is far from assured.
As a leading digital retailer, Amazon is well aware of the fact that cash is quickly fading into obscurity. Two-thirds of the public now prefer to make payments via credit and debit cards, according to PayAnywhere, one of the already well-established leaders in the mobile payments industry.
According to a recent post on the PayAnywhere Blog, mobile solutions are gaining critical mass at the point of sale for many reasons, not the least of which is that they allow merchants to "expedite sales and fund transfers with much greater efficiency, while keeping all monies safe from loss, theft or fire."
Based on the content of Amazon's patent filing, security is definitely a high priority in the envisioned solution. Amazon's carefully detailed service description points to an "anonymous mobile payments" platform enabling a user to make or receive payments without disclosing personal or private information.
"Consumers are more worried than ever about the prospect of fraud and identity theft," Randazzo asserts. "And that is one of the biggest reasons why mobile payments have taken off so fast. Not only are they generally very safe and reliable, they allow consumers to make purchases without ever physically handing their card over to a server, cashier, or any other human being for that matter."
For now, Amazon isn't formally commenting on the patent filing or providing any clues as to when the solution may be introduced to merchants.
via Technology articles at Technorati http://feeds09.technorati.com/~r/tr-technology/~3/ezjwIuUbtbY/