Amazon wants to make it easier to pay your bills. The company's Amazon Payments service enables customers to used the information stored in their Amazon accounts to pay phone bills, monthly fees for music subscription services and a wide variety of other recurring charges.
With more than 244 million active users, Amazon is looking at the opportunity to further advance its position with third-party sellers including those who do not participate on the site's marketplace.
"If you think about giving a merchant that you may not know very well the right to continue to charge your credit card in the future, you really want to know that a good relationship with Amazon stands behind that," Amazon vice president of seller services Tom Taylor told Reuters. "We hope whoever the next Spotify out there is thinking about Amazon."
![[Image: Amazon Payments]](/public/images/discussions/17576/amazon-payments-still.jpg)
Amazon will make money by charging a fee to merchants on each transaction. The standard transaction fee is 2.99 percent plus 30 cents for transactions of $10 or more. Transactions under $10 come with a five percent fee plus 5 cents per transaction.
Nathalie Reinelt, an analyst with Aite Group, told CNN, "I think it's smart for Amazon to do this and expand their footprint in the one-click payment space," she said.