When Amazon Payments meets high fashion, shopping gets a whole new look - CNET

The partnership with Moda is a small one, but it could be the first of many for Amazon. Moda is a niche e-commerce player that sells clothes and shoes for hundreds or thousands of dollars. It plans to use this in-store payments feature at its only two invite-only boutiques in New York and London, as well as at trunk shows and fashion events.

Yet, this deal points to what might someday become commonplace in the payments world. Payments -- yes, payments -- has become a hot topic in tech, with PayPal, Visa, Google and a growing set of startups trying to create faster, easier ways to get us to part with our money. Today, the payments market is messy and confusing, with competing tech companies encouraging customers to pay at the register using a dizzying list of apps or mobile devices.

But the current chaos points to a day in the future when there may not even be registers or cashiers. People would be identified when they walk into stores and could pay for what they need without having to wait in line or fumble with cards or cash. That's at least a goal. The Moda deal is another tiny step forward to get there, along with Google's new app called Hands Free, which lets people pay by telling cashiers "I'll pay with Google," and Visa's idea of having people's cars automatically pay for gas.

Amazon's interest in growing its payments service, which takes a small cut of each transaction, is to engage more customers, said Amazon Payments' vice president Patrick Gauthier, a former PayPal manager.

"Trust is not a painting you hang on a wall. Trust is something you nurture," he said during an interview at the hotel Friday. "When we enable consumers to use their Amazon accounts where they want, we're nurturing that trust."

Moda wanted the partnership to link up with a brand many customers already have an affinity for and use regularly, even if it's not for boutique clothing, said Keiron McCammon, Moda's chief technology officer. Amazon's over 300 million customer accounts makes for a lot of potential customers.

Yet Amazon's expansion into payments is being viewed with suspicion. The company is the biggest online retailer worldwide by sales and many retailers fear it may use data compiled through Amazon Payments to compete against them. That has kept Amazon Payments small compared with PayPal, the leading digital payments provider.

"Most of the other retailers don't want to see Amazon getting any more power," David Mitchell Smith, a Gartner analyst, said of Amazon Payments, "so it's by no means a slam dunk."

Gauthier said Amazon Payments only receives data on which customers shopped at a retail and the total amount spent.

"We have never used data of Pay with Amazon merchants, we never will" except to make sure transactions are secure and work properly, he said.