Amazon has launched its first entry into the mobile wallet space with a new app called “Amazon Wallet,” now available in beta on the Amazon Appstore and the Play Store (via TechCrunch). Sadly, the app is oddly incapable in its current state, and doesn’t quite live up to the promise of being a true competitor to PayPal and Google Wallet — it can’t currently store credit cards or debit cards and is mostly geared at storing your gift cards and loyalty cards.
Essentially, this app lets your scan and save the countless loyalty, membership, and gift cards sitting in your wallet, and lets you use these digital copies instead. Also, certain merchant gift cards will allow you to quickly and easily check balances. But what isn’t here is the functionality that comes with other mobile payment platforms — you can’t do normal mobile payments.
Use the Amazon Wallet app to simplify your shopping trips, and never lose another gift card or rewards membership number. Scan or type your gift cards, loyalty cards and membership cards to your Amazon Wallet to reduce the clutter in your leather wallet or purse. Wherever you are, the information you need is easily available as a barcode, QR code, text or image. For supported merchants, check the balance of your stored gift cards. Information saved in your Amazon Wallet is stored securely in the Amazon cloud. In addition, your Amazon Wallet cards can be viewed and edited at Amazon.com/wallet, where you will also find the credit cards, bank accounts, and other payment methods saved in your Amazon account.
Amazon also has a website for managing the cards associated with your Amazon account located at www.amazon.com/wallet. Here, you’ll find all the cards that you’ve put into the app as well as the debit and credit cards that are listed on your account. You can add gift cards via the “Merchant Cards” tab, which lets you input all the applicable information and even lets you upload a photo of the card.
The app is currently listed as “beta” on the Play Store, so this is surely just the beginning of what Amazon plans to do in this space.
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