Amazon adopts point-of-sale payment platforms

jul

2014

Nicolas DIACONO

15 July 2014

2 minutes

Amazon purchased the “GoPago live” solution developed by start-up GoPago in December 2013. The start-up, which was formed in 2009, is a direct competitor of the successful mobile payments platform Square. This acquisition enables Amazon to take on bricks-and-mortar retailing with the in-store payment terminal.

The facts

At the end of 2013, Amazon bought GoPago’s mobile payment technology while at the same time retaining the technical team who worked on the project.
GoPago is an American start-up conceived by two Italians, Vincenzo Di Nicola and Leo Rocco, based on the simple idea that customers lacked the possibility of quickly buying and collecting an item from local shops, and also that shopkeepers lacked a way of winning over customers who are in a hurry. The company also offers GoPago Live, a modernized cash register solution presented on a 4G-connected tablet.
Amazon, which was working on a project competing with the Square system for over a year, will thus buy time to transform its Kindle into a mobile payment collection system.
Amazon will thus offer an all-inclusive payment and CRM solution irrespective of the sales channel offering real online/offline convergence.

Interpretation

Amazon’s positioning meets the expectations of retailers, as recently announced by the National Retail Federation (NRF) in its latest survey of 200 international retailers about payment collection systems. 40% of retailers want a single platform to handle their online and in-store sales!
So convergence is underway, but is achievable if and only if retail chains can respond with their customer data as quickly offline as they can online.
Amazon’s position in this respect is all the more strategic as the same NRF survey shows that 38% of retailers would prefer their system to be based on their online payment system rather than on the one already in place in their bricks-and-mortar stores (19%).
Armed with its marketplace, Amazon already has a whole ecosystem of bricks-and-mortar retailers with whom it will be able to develop its omni-channel payment solution.
In the long term it could become the shopping companion of consumers through its customer knowledge and the sales receipt. Amazon would also have an extensive bricks-and-mortar distribution network at its disposal to become… a local player! Google had better watch out!