Hosting third parties in that context would mean they develop functionalities complementary to Amazon's payment system for Amazon's payment systems' customers. This is importantly difference from licensing the payment system (presumably on a white label basis) to third parties to build their own payment system based on it.
The former would indeed allow Amazon's payment system to grow larger. The latter would just monetize it differently.
There are lots of reasons acquiring Shopify wouldn't work (antitrust is one of them). But Amazon could build their own Shopify-like product around the payment system. Interesting question is whether they would be OK to allow their merchants to sell outside Amazon.com using Amazon tools. At some point that may become the right move. The eBay and PayPal analogy works here: initially PayPal was tied to eBay but at some point it became clear that restricted PayPal's potential so they allowed it to be used outside eBay and eventually spun it off.
Hey, really enjoying the articles. I was wondering whether the development strategy of hosting 3rd parties could used to develop an online payment system. For example, Amazon's online payment system could open developer and programming interfaces which would allow business's to build their products/services around amazons online payment system. Or would there be anther strategy more suited to helping amazon's payment system grow larger that I am missing?
Hosting third parties in that context would mean they develop functionalities complementary to Amazon's payment system for Amazon's payment systems' customers. This is importantly difference from licensing the payment system (presumably on a white label basis) to third parties to build their own payment system based on it.
The former would indeed allow Amazon's payment system to grow larger. The latter would just monetize it differently.
There are lots of reasons acquiring Shopify wouldn't work (antitrust is one of them). But Amazon could build their own Shopify-like product around the payment system. Interesting question is whether they would be OK to allow their merchants to sell outside Amazon.com using Amazon tools. At some point that may become the right move. The eBay and PayPal analogy works here: initially PayPal was tied to eBay but at some point it became clear that restricted PayPal's potential so they allowed it to be used outside eBay and eventually spun it off.
Hey, really enjoying the articles. I was wondering whether the development strategy of hosting 3rd parties could used to develop an online payment system. For example, Amazon's online payment system could open developer and programming interfaces which would allow business's to build their products/services around amazons online payment system. Or would there be anther strategy more suited to helping amazon's payment system grow larger that I am missing?