Amazon WebPay, a free online money-transfer service, is shutting down on October 13, 2014. This means you’ll no longer be able to send, receive, or request money using just your email address and the Amazon Payments webpage.
There were hints back in June that the service would be going away soon. Amazon sent out an email this week to active Amazon Payments account users notifying them it is pulling the plug.
The company also said it had updated its user agreement to note “the elimination of person-to-person payments.” Users thus have more than a four weeks to read the new terms and switch to a different service.
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The “Send Money” option will simply no longer appear after Amazon Payments customers log into their account next month. The reasoning for the shut down, according to Amazon, is that it’s not doing a good enough job:
We are not addressing a customer pain point particularly better than anyone else. We’ve learned a great deal about how and when customers want to send money and will look for ways to use these lessons in the future.
Transactions initiated prior to October 13 will not be affected, and recipients will also have 30 days to claim funds before the transaction is cancelled and funds are returned to the sender. Your transaction history will still be viewable at payments.amazon.com (sign in and click “Your Account”), though it’s not clear for how long.
The last WebPay FAQ question asks if there is another way to send, receive, or request money with other customers from your Amazon account. The short answer reads “No, Amazon does not offer an alternative.”
See also – Amazon takes on Square with Local Register, a mobile card reader with lower transaction fees and Amazon’s new Firefly scanning service can recognize art, TV shows, phone numbers, URLs and more
Image credit: AFP/Getty
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