How Many Consumers Used Amazon Payments in 2016? Thirty-Three Million, Amazon Says

By Kevin Woodward
@DTPaymentNews

One-third of the payments that consumers made using Pay with Amazon in 2016 were on a mobile device, e-commerce giant Amazon.com Inc. revealed Tuesday. Pay with Amazon enables consumers to use their Amazon wallets to pay for merchandise on other retailer’s Web sites.

In a rare release of performance numbers, Seattle-based Amazon also noted that 33 million consumers used Amazon Payments to make a purchase in 2016, and added that its payment volume almost doubled last year. Amazon would not release payment volume totals, but said there were 23 million Pay with Amazon users in 2015.

Amazon has been promoting its payments service as a way for it and other retailers to take advantage of how consumers shop. In 2016, Patrick Gauthier, vice president of Amazon Payments, told Digital Transactions News that the service would “grow really fast.” He added then: “Amazon knows the connected life is not just connected through the Web and not just through mobile.”

Amazon also last year launched an integrated payments-developer program for e-commerce that is now available in the United States, Germany, the United Kingdom, and Japan. Fifty developers are enrolled in the program, Amazon says.

In its Tuesday release, Amazon noted other milestones:

· More than 50% of Pay with Amazon consumers are members of Amazon Prime;

· Active merchants increased 120% last year;

· The average ticket for a Pay with Amazon transaction was $80. The single largest transaction was $40,000.