Amazon quietly released the Amazon Wallet today. It’s a standard digital wallet, but the app could hint at greater goals for Amazon.
The Amazon Wallet was caught by a number of Android blogs a few days ago, but only officially announced today, is a simple digital wallet — it can only store gift and loyalty cards. The app does not (yet) have the ability to store credit and debit cards, which seems to be integral for a mobile wallet. The app does come preinstalled in every Fire Phone — Amazon’s new flagship smartphone, which should give it an early leg up in adoption.
The Fire Phone emphasizes commerce, starting with Firefly, the Fire Phone-only feature that allows users to identify physical goods and purchase them online. The focus on commerce is clear — Amazon even put a dedicated button for the Firefly feature into the device so that users can access it easily.
When the Fire Phone came out last month, pundits thought that the “showrooming” feature would terrify retailers, who were already battling with Amazon over e-commerce payments.
The Amazon Wallet could be just as frightening for merchants. Now, Amazon directly enters the payment process if Fire Phone users are using gift or loyalty cards. When the Amazon Wallet adds credit and debit card information, Amazon will have the entire customer payment experience — and the data that goes with it — in its hands.
Conquering the physical world is clearly Amazon’s goal. Amazon has a stranglehold on the e-commerce market, but 82 percent of transactions are still made in stores. By undercutting retailers and getting users to buy goods online even when their in the store, and now entering the payment process, Amazon has issued a warning to retailers: Watch out.