Amazon expands from e-commerce to commerce in general

In a job advert, Amazon confirms that it is seeking to move from „e-commerce to commerce in general”, building products and services that can be used to buy and sell in the real world.

One of the products is person-to-person payments, an area which would put Amazon in direct competition with PayPal and provide the e-commerce giant with a useful tool for its widely anticipated mobile phone, expected to launch later this year, according to finextra.com.

Meanwhile, the company is also planning to take on PayPal, Square and more traditional POS vendors such as VeriFone with a checkout system for bricks-and-mortar retailers, according to the Wall Street Journal. The new product could combine a credit card reader with a Kindle tablet and will tap GoPago, the start-up from which Amazon bought technology and hired engineers late last year.

Amazon has also recently applied for a patent for a card that would link all of a user’s credit cards to one Amazon card for selection via an app on consumer mobiles.

Earlier this week it was reported that another tech giant, Apple, is also preparing to jump further into the payments arena through the launch of a mobile wallet service for iPhone, iPad and iTunes users.