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Amazon is a name synonymous with online retail, however the recent forays the company has been making into other domains – especially the highly competitive mobile devices arena – shows that the company is now aiming to expand their horizons. In a similar push, Amazon has quietly launched a Wallet app on the Amazon Appstore and also on Google’s Play Store. The Amazon Wallet has been launched in ‘Beta’ mode and is unsurprisingly bare-bones as compared to the more mature offerings from Google. The company expects to accumulate valuable user feedback before it overhauls the implementation of the Amazon Wallet to include more features.
In its current avatar, Amazon Wallet can store details about your gift cards, loyalty cards or membership cards, which can either be typed or scanned from the card directly. The card can then be stored as a barcode, as QR code, text or image and would be readily available while simultaneously negating the need to physically carry the cards along with yourself on your next shopping trip. Amazon also claims that for supported merchants, Amazon Wallet will allow users to check the balance of the stored gift cards. The mobile app has an online extension service as well – the Amazon Wallet webpage – which allows you to add credit or debit cards and even US Checking Accounts as payment methods. All details of your saved cards on Amazon Wallet will also be reflected on the Amazon Wallet webpage, along with any other payment method which you have used with Amazon earlier.
Though a valiant effort, the Amazon Wallet app is hardly any competition in its current state to the more widely used Google Wallet. It also seems Amazon’s long-term plans include being a rival payment service to the likes of PayPal, however that is still a distant dream. On our part, we are highly confident that Amazon would evolve this service in a swift manner basis the user feedback they receive from the app users. If you have installed Amazon Wallet on your smartphone or tablet, do let us know your views in the comments below.
