Just months after officially folding its payments processing business, Amazon Register, the eCommerce giant confirmed it will offer Square credit card readers to business owners who previously purchased the Amazon’s payment device linked to its now-defunct program, Re/code reported on Thursday (Feb. 4).
Amazon Register was a $10 POS device aimed at small businesses and mom-and-pop stores that plugged into a smartphone or a tablet. The service, which Amazon announced it was officially shutting down last October, was in direct competition with the likes of both Square and PayPal.
But now, Amazon is playing nice with Square and offering any customers who bought its device as part of the Local Register service a promotional code that can be redeemed for a card-swiping device from Square.
“The only thing better would be if they delivered the Square Readers by drone,” a Square spokeswoman told Re/code.
Amazon Register was launched in Aug. 2014 and, despite being late to the payments processing game, its inviting pricing strategy (a percentage point less than Square and PayPal) was suspected to have some success. Amazon shut down the service three months ago and stopped supporting the business as of Feb. 1.
Around the same time last year, Amazon also announced the closure of another one of its ventures — its daily deals program and Amazon Local app.
The company said it would officially stop selling deals via its Amazon Local platform as of Dec. 18.
“We’ve learned a great deal from the daily deals business and will look for ways to apply these lessons in the future as we continue to innovate on behalf of our customers and merchants,” a company spokesperson told GeekWire at the time.
Just weeks before that announcement, Amazon also confirmed it was closing down its travel site, Amazon Destinations, without much of an explanation, except to say it was also a program the company learned a lot from.
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