Kickstarter Ditches Amazon As Payment Processor, Switches To Stripe

If you’ve been avoiding backing interesting projects on Kickstarter because you didn’t want to deal with Amazon Payments or log in to two accounts to pledge a couple of bucks for some potato salad, your wait is over: Kickstarter is breaking up with Amazon and switching to a different payments processor, Stripe.

Kickstarter says that Amazon has processed more than $1 billion in payments over the years they’ve been working together, from which Amazon has collected about 3% in fees. According to the Wall Street Journal, the timing is unfortunate to lose such a big payments customer, since the company has been working to find more merchants to use its Amazon Payments system. Kickstarter is one company that collects money online, but doesn’t compete with Amazon. (Remember, Kickstarter is not a store.) Other retailers might be understandably hesitant to partner with Amazon when Amazon is their competition for online sales.

Kickstarter promises that the change will make the process easier for project creators, since creating and verifying an Amazon Payments merchant account can be a lengthy process that takes several days. Stripe “takes about two minutes,” Kickstarter explains in their blog post announcing the change in processors.

Making Payments Easier for Creators and Backers [Kickstarter]

Amazon Payments Kicked Off Crowdsourced Fundraising Site Kickstarter [Wall Street Journal]

by Laura Northrup via Consumerist