Amazon Has No Plans to Incorporate Bitcoin Payments

Ever wondered if Amazon might start accepting Bitcoin as payment for on-sale items? During a recent interview with newssite Re/code, major online retailer Amazon has made its stance on Bitcoin pretty clear. It has no current plans to incorporate Bitcoin into its payment systems.

Amazon Says No to Bitcoin Payments

Tom Taylor, Amazon payments head explained the corporation’s stance on Bitcoin,

“Obviously it gets a lot of press and we have considered it. But we’re not hearing from customers that it’s right for them and don’t have any plans within Amazon to engage bitcoin.”

From this, it can be implied that perhaps if customers make enough noise about Bitcoin, Amazon might reconsider its stance in the near future. However, even if this happens, there is no guarantee that anything will change.

Even though Amazon is not taking Bitcoin as payment, Tom Taylor agrees that there are advantages to Bitcoin. However, after taking Amazon sellers into consideration, the company decided against using Bitcoin.

When asked if Amazon would ever create its own payments network, Tom Taylor responded,

“If we felt like we could do a better job than Amex and Visa, and feel like it helps the customer experience, that’s something we would do. But it would really have to be something much better than [what they do].”

Other Online Retailers Say Yes to Bitcoin

Although Bitcoin doesn’t seem to have a bright future where Amazon is concerned, there are other large online retailers who have readily accepted the digital currency. Overstock.com was the first major online American retailer to start accepting Bitcoin as payments for goods. To those who thought this was a publicity stunt, the company’s CEO, Patrick Byrne is quite taken with Bitcoin. In fact he said that he is holding onto it like gold:

“I’m holding it like I hold gold. I want a robust safety net as things play out. I’ve always had misgivings about fiat currencies.”

In addition to Overtock.com, Tigerdirect, a major electronics retailer started accepting Bitcoin for payment back in January, 2014. Both Overstock.com and Tigerdirect have seen profit from adding Bitcoin to their payment processing. Perhaps Amazon would see such benefits as well if it too adopted Bitcoin for payments.

Image via Amazon.com