Amazon Is Ditching It’s Mobile Payments App

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There is a huge rush among startups, retailers and tech giants to become the go-to mobile payments provider. It makes sense as well. According to Forrester Research mobile payments will account for $142 billion in transactions by 2019, which is nearly three times as much as 2014. And as Apple Pay starts to grow among both users and businesses accepting the payments it is becoming increasingly difficult to enter the market. Amazon found that even they got in too late when they released Amazon Wallet six months ago.

The mobile payments industry is still very nascent but Apple has succeeded where other big players like Google failed. Google Wallet failed to get retailers on board which limited its success, but Apple has been able to do just that. Google hasn’t taken the same route as Amazon though, and is reportedly considering an acquisition of Softcard, a mobile payments startup that was started by wireless companies.

Amazon started to tell their customers about the change this week. They did not say whether or not it would return. This failure comes shortly after the company failed in well-publicized fashion with their Amazon Fire smartphone. Amazon also had another gaffe recently when they launched their diaper line only to recall the product shortly thereafter.

One major critique of the phone is that it could not be used to manage credit or debit cards. Nearly all of its main competitors had the option to make make it easier to manage their cards with the app.

If you are a user of the mobile payment solution you can still use any gift, loyalty or membership cards stored on Amazon Wallet, but some features like wallet balances will no longer be available after Wednesday.