Amazon takes on PayPal with subscription-based payments

With plenty of third-party sellers populating its online store, Amazon is well accustomed to playing the middleman for processing transactions. Now the e-tailer’s taking that middleman role one step further; it will now manage monthly subscription payments for companies such as wireless service provider Ting. It’s just the latest move in Amazon’s ongoing effort to overtake PayPal.

Amazon users will be able to use their stored credit-card information to make monthly payments at participating sites. For anyone who’s used PayPal, the process will be very familiar; you’ll see a payment button that will pull in your billing info from Amazon to process a transaction. Beyond Ting, it isn’t clear which companies will take advantage of the service, but we’d expect to see digital music services, additional wireless providers and gaming sites.

Naturally, Amazon will get a fee for each transaction. For partners, the benefit comes in the form of Amazon’s name, which will theoretically make you feel safer when shopping at little-known web merchants. For many customers, though, privacy concerns remain. VP of seller services Tom Taylor told Reuters that Amazon will only collect the dollar amount of customers’ transactions, rather than information about which items were purchased. In any case, it all depends on customer trust – and a long list of partner merchants – for Amazon to make a dent in PayPal’s business.

Filed under: Internet, Amazon

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Source: Reuters

Secret’s new Dens will keep your confessions within company walls

When you spill your guts on Secret, that post is sent anonymously to a network based on the people on your phone’s contacts list, and if it gets enough hearts, it might even go viral and spread out to the rest of the world. But say you want to post an inside joke that only your co-workers might understand, or maybe a secret lunch tip that you’d only want people in your college to know about. Well, you just might be able to do so thanks to a new feature that the folks over at Secret are testing called Secret Dens. A “den” can be an organization like a company or a school, and anything that you post to that den will be strictly confined to those walls — no outside sharing allowed.

If your organization has signed up for the Den feature, you can add yourself to the Secret Den with your work or university email address. From there, you can post to the Den by adding “@yourdomain” to the post. Posts shared to that Den will have the den’s name on the bottom left corner, and interestingly, anyone from that domain can remove anyone else, which might be trouble if anyone gets into a petty spat at work. You’ll need to be on Secret’s invite-only list to sign up and the feature is still in its pilot stage, so maybe it’ll change once it’s ready for release. Head on over to the source to find out more about the “den” feature and if it’s something you want for your organization.

Filed under: Internet

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Source: Secret

DICE’s upcoming ‘Mirror’s Edge’ sequel features new parkour controls, tighter combat

Remember that Mirror’s Edge sequel DICE showed off at last year’s E3? Yeah, well we’re no closer to an actual release date for the title, but the studio did show off some more rendered footage at Electronic Arts’ press event. The focus this time around is on the all-new move set the team’s built into Faith, the game’s protagonist. DICE consulted with actual parkour artists to include a new range of controls tied into actual combat. DICE also promised there’ll be more in the way of player involvement with the story and a focus on the who and why behind Faith and the other “runners” occupying the game’s world. We’ve got the full trailer, so head on past the break to check it out.

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