It appears that Amazon has officially launched its rumored Amazon Checkout product, the PayPal Express Checkout / Google Checkout competitor. While there has been no press release on this, you can see and read all about it on the CBA (Checkout By Amazon) product page here.

How does it work? Very similar to other third-party checkout solutions, merchants can embed an Amazon button on the cart page to give consumers an additional checkout option - and then complete the transaction via the familiar Amazon checkout flow (reusing their Amazon account information incl. shipping address and payment method). But I’ll let Amazon speak to the benefits of CBA:

• Low friction for Amazon customers: Customers can use the information from their Amazon.com account and other websites powered by Amazon.com to complete purchases on your website without having to re-enter their shipping address or payment information.
• Familiar checkout experience: Checkout by Amazon provides the familiar checkout experience available on Amazon.com today on your website.
• 1-Click ordering: Checkout by Amazon can identify Amazon.com customers shopping on your website and offer them Amazon’s 1-Click experience. This allows customers to place orders instantly without leaving your website.
• Cart up-sell: Checkout by Amazon enables you to up-sell your products within the checkout pipeline. At your option, you can also earn Amazon.com Associate commissions for up-selling Amazon products during checkout.
• Reduced bad debt: Amazon’s proven fraud detection capabilities, chargeback controls, and risk management processes reduce bad debt.
• Shipping rates and Sales tax: Checkout by Amazon provides real-time shipping and sales tax calculation when customers place orders. It provides tools to easily configure the shipping and sales tax rates.
• Promotions: Checkout by Amazon provides tools to create and offer customized promotions to your customers.
• Purchase protection for your customers: Your customers will feel more confident buying from your site knowing that they have the same protection under the Amazon A-to-z Guarantee that they have when they shop on Amazon.com.
• Order management: Checkout by Amazon provides tools to view, edit, settle, and cancel orders, search orders by date, download orders in a text file, and print shipping labels and packing slips.
• Works seamlessly with Fulfillment by Amazon: Checkout by Amazon combined with Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA) enables you to outsource both transaction processing and fulfillment.
• Co-branded payment pages: You can co-brand the checkout pipeline hosted by Amazon Payments with your own logo.

Should you go ahead and add this to your e-Commerce store? I’ll defer to Scot’s blog post for now on the value of CBA, including pro’s and con’s.

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