Dive Brief:
- An Amazon official told CNET that the online marketplace will not accept PayPal payments for purchases in the near future.
- PayPal split from parent company eBay in 2015, clearing the way for partnerships with former competitors including Amazon.
- Amazon is ramping up its similar Pay with Amazon service, which lets shoppers use an Amazon log-in to make payments at its own and other retailers’ sites.
Dive Insight:
To counter heightened competition in digital payments space, the newly independent PayPal needs to forge new partnerships. Amazon won’t be among them, however, says Amazon Payments vice president Patrick Gauthier—himself a PayPal alum.
Formerly an eBay property, PayPal is beset on all sides with payments systems such as Apple Pay, Samsung Pay, and CurrentC, a system spearheaded by a consortium of large retailers including Wal-Mart. Banks and credit card companies including Visa, Capital One, and JPMorgan Chase are quickly introducing digital wallet systems, too.
Amazon’s own system, Pay with Amazon, launched in 2013 and has so far served about 23 million customers so far—a figure Gauthier wants to double within a year. PayPal is still the largest digital payments system, with 173 million active accounts worldwide.
