Have an Amazon seller's account? You might benefit from Amazon Pay, a payment services provider that allows you to add convenient checkout buttons to your website.
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Expert Contributor
Last updated onUpdated
REVIEWED BY
Lead Staff Writer
| Total Rating | 4.6 |
|---|---|
| Fees & Rates4.4 | |
| Products & Services4.5 | |
| Contract4.5 | |
| Sales & Advertising Transparency4.9 | |
| Customer Service4.8 | |
| User Reviews4.7 | |
Table of Contents
Amazon Pay is a payment service provider that enables online shoppers to securely pay for purchases on a merchant’s website using their Amazon accounts. eCommerce sellers can create an Amazon Pay account and, with minimal work, add Amazon checkout buttons to their websites.
To use Amazon Pay, you’ll need an Amazon Seller account, though you don’t have to list any of your products on Amazon (but you’ll reach far more customers if you do). You’ll also have to comply with Amazon Pay’s Acceptable Use Policy, which prohibits you from selling products considered high-risk in the processing industry.
In this Amazon Pay review, we’ll answer the questions that need answering: What is Amazon Pay? Is Amazon Pay one of the best credit card processing choices? Is it right for my business?
Note that when you first start using Amazon Pay, you will have to wait a bit longer than usual to receive your funds. Amazon employs a reserve system, so when you first begin processing payments, all initial transactions will be held in Amazon’s reserve for 14 days.
After that point, Amazon puts a hold on your funds for seven days, and there is disbursement scheduled for every day (e.g., on your 17th day of selling, you will receive payment for purchases made on your 9th day of selling).
An important note: Your bank account must be associated with your Seller Central account to receive funds from Amazon Pay. You’ll also need to provide a valid credit card number in the event you end up with a negative account balance. Since Amazon Pay doesn’t charge any recurring fees, this is only likely to happen if you have to issue a refund or incur a chargeback.
Amazon Pay is currently available to merchants in the following countries:
To use Amazon Pay, you must have an established physical presence in the country in which you are processing transactions. More specifically, you must have a street address, a bank account, a credit card associated with your street address, and a phone number based in your country of operation.
| Products & Services4.5 |
|---|
| Software & Services 4.0 |
| Hardware & Equipment 5.0 |
Amazon Pay offers a robust online processing package for eCommerce merchants, earning it a very strong rating in this category. Our main quibble here is that Amazon Pay doesn’t allow buyers to pay using Amazon gift cards — a strange oversight indeed.
Feature highlights include:
Amazon Pay offers prebuilt integrations with over two dozen major online shopping carts, including leading provider Shopify. The service also provides many other ways to integrate the payment service with a merchant’s website, including payment buttons and hosted checkout options.
Look into Amazon Pay’s documentation for more details regarding integration options.
| Fees & Rates4.4 |
|---|
| Pricing 5.0 |
| Affordability 3.8 |
Like PayPal and most other eCommerce-focused processors, Amazon Pay utilizes a flat-rate pricing structure. Simple and easy to understand, Amazon’s pricing schedule is disclosed in detail on its website. The flat processing rates are pretty standard for an online processor, but we appreciate Amazon’s complete transparency in this regard. We’re giving Amazon Pay strong scores in this category.
Price is based on the transaction type and location of the buyer.
| Item | Value |
|---|---|
| Pricing Starts At | $0 |
| Contract Length | Month-to-month |
| Processing Model | Flat-rate |
| eCommerce Transaction Fee | 2.9% + $0.30 |
| Amazon Pay Extra Costs | Price |
|---|---|
| Cross-Border Transactions | 3.9% + $0.30 |
| Alexa Voice-Activated Transactions (Real-World Goods & Services) | 4.0% + $0.30 (or 5.0% + $0.30 for cross-border) |
| Charitable Organizations | 2.2% + $0.30 (or 3.2% + $0.30 for cross-border) |
| Chargeback Fee | $20 |
Unlike many traditional credit card processors, Amazon won’t charge you account setup fees, monthly fees, PCI compliance fees, or any other fees. There are no contracts to sign, and therefore, no early termination fees. Amazon Pay just charges fees on the transactions you process, so you only pay when you use the service.
| Sales & Advertising Transparency4.9 |
|---|
| Sales Practices 5.0 |
| Web Presence 4.7 |
Amazon is so well-established that it doesn’t need to rely on traditional sales or marketing campaigns. With payment information stored for more than 300 million individuals living around the globe, it’s easy for Amazon to spread the word about services available through its site, via either referral or word of mouth.
There are no hidden fees associated with Amazon Pay. As long as you take the time to read the FAQs on the website, you should have a good grasp of how the service works. Accordingly, Amazon Pay deserves its high score in this category.
Amazon Pay also has a respectable presence on social media, with active accounts on Facebook and Twitter. Additionally, it maintains a blog and has a YouTube channel that features numerous tutorials and testimonials from merchants.
| Contract4.5 |
|---|
| Commitment 4.4 |
| ETF & Other Fees 4.6 |
Amazon allows you to use Amazon Pay without committing to a long-term contract. The use of the service is essentially month-to-month, but without any recurring monthly or annual fees, there’s little reason to cancel your account.
However, we have to ding Amazon Pay’s score a bit in this section due to its aforementioned tiered reserve system, which is understandably not popular with merchants who have just signed up with the service.
If you want to cancel your account, Amazon provides a link you can use to contact a Seller Support representative, who will close the account for you. There’s also no early termination fee whatsoever. Unlike other processors who require at least a 30-day written notice of account closure to avoid getting billed for an additional month, you can close your account at any time with no penalty.
| Customer Service4.8 |
|---|
| Personal Support 4.5 |
| Self-Service 5.0 |
Amazon Pay has consolidated its online support resources into a single Help section. From here, you can access a tremendous variety of topics ranging from how to sign up for the service to how to handle a chargeback, and much more.
| Amazon Pay Customer Service | Availability |
|---|---|
| Phone Support | |
| Email Support | |
| Support Tickets | |
| Live Chat | |
| Dedicated Support Representative | |
| Knowledge Base or Help Center | |
| Videos & Tutorials | |
| Company Blog | |
| Social Media |
The help section is divided into resources for customers and merchants, so your customers can use it as well if they have a problem with completing an order or making a payment. Documentation is also available for integrating any of the numerous third-party shopping carts that are compatible with Amazon Pay.
While the Help section of the website should be your first stop if you need help, traditional customer service options are also available. Customer support is available via email, telephone, and live chat. Live support is available every day from 5 AM to 9 PM PST.
Be aware that you must already be signed up for the service to use these options. Therefore, we weren’t able to see how easy or difficult it is to reach a customer support representative. However, our experiences with the company’s sales and marketing representatives have all been positive and timely.
| User Reviews4.7 |
|---|
| Customer Feedback 5.0 |
| Review Site Aggregate 4.5 |
Feedback from merchants using Amazon Pay is mostly positive, although the service does receive many of the same types of complaints that are common with payment service providers (PSPs). These issues include frequent account holds, freezes, and terminations, as well as limited customer service options.
Despite these complaints, Amazon Pay is quite well-received by merchants on the whole, leading to its robust score in this category. Amazon Pay’s average user rating stands at 4.6/5 at GetApp (based on 101 reviews) and 4.5/5 at G2 (538 reviews).
Let’s go through the Amazon Pay pros and cons as described by merchants using the service.
If you’re currently an Amazon seller, using Amazon Pay to process payments for your eCommerce site is a no-brainer. At the same time, Amazon Pay also offers significant advantages for sellers and organizations not associated with the company. You’ll be able to manage transactions, view reports, contact customer support, and more in Amazon’s Seller Central. You’ll also be protected against fraud-related chargebacks that fit into the service’s payments protection policy.
What’s more, your customers won’t be directed away from your website to complete sales, so your conversion rates should improve as well. While we’re not fans of Amazon Pay’s reserve policies, merchants who use the service don’t seem to mind terribly. On the whole, Amazon Pay earns its high overall score.
For merchants who already have a traditional merchant account, why not add Amazon Pay to your site as a supplemental payment option? It costs you nothing to sign up, and with pay-as-you-go billing, you won’t be committed to a long-term contract or recurring monthly fees. Amazon Pay has an intuitive interface and plenty of users who already have Amazon accounts, and provides superb name recognition.
We evaluate and test each payment processor that we review at Merchant Maverick, placing special emphasis on certain key characteristics in order to generate our granular ratings for merchant accounts and credit card processors.
For payment processing reviews, we use a 24-point rubric to evaluate the provider. First, we look at pricing structure – interchange plus, subscription-based, tiered, or hybrid – giving the most points to providers that provide fair, transparent pricing and docking those that rely on tiered models. Then we examine rates, the presence and transparency of early termination fees, and any additional fees.
We also look at contract length and fairness and test out sales staff and customer service channels ourselves to ensure that the company uses reputable, above-the-board sales techniques. Finally, we take the company’s online reputation into account, reading customer reviews and comments.
Read more about how we rate payment processors.
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Merchant Maverick’s ratings are editorial in nature, and are not aggregated from user reviews. Each staff reviewer at Merchant Maverick is a subject matter expert with experience researching, testing, and evaluating small business software and services. The rating of this company or service is based on the author’s expert opinion and analysis of the product, and assessed and seconded by another subject matter expert on staff before publication. Merchant Maverick’s ratings are not influenced by affiliate partnerships.
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