Amazon launches Digital Wallet and smartphone
After announcing its first smartphone dubbed the “Fire phone” a few weeks ago, Amazon has now launched its own digital wallet to US consumers.
While the technology isn’t the first of its kind - following in the footsteps of Google Wallet, Apple’s Passbook, Coles Mobile Wallet and even Australia Post’s MyPost Digital Mailbox - it's largely advertised as a single location to store gift and rewards cards in its Amazon cloud.
How it works is you scan or type the card information into the Amazon Wallet app, so you can declutter your wallet or purse of those numerous loyalty cards. The app is available for free and allows you to check your gift card balances on the move. “Wherever you are, the information you need is easily available as a barcode, QR code, text or image,” said Amazon.
The digital wallet, comes just 5 weeks after Amazon unveiled its Fire phone, which has seen Amazon Appstore submissions double. Amazon Appstore’s Vice President Mike George said “when we launched Fire phone, we couldn’t wait to see what developers were going to build with Dynamic Perspective and Firefly."
“In just the few weeks since we unveiled Fire phone, we’ve been blown away with the new, innovative use cases developed with these groundbreaking technologies.”
Amazon’s digital wallet is currently only available in the US, so we will have to wait and see if the technology makes it down under.
Read more about contactless payment technology here and search the credit card market for more innovative payment options.