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PayPal and Visa Talk Partnership

April 14, 2016 By Amanda Blankenship 1 Comment

When two large companies begin to do business together, people tend to pay attention. For instance, when a company as large as Kroger buys another company or begins doing business with Albertsons, people notice.

There has been a buzz around two huge companies and a potential partnership. PayPal and Visa may be joining forces, according to Investors.com. However, SunTrust said it has still yet to be seen whether or not the two companies can come to an agreement.

Traditionally, PayPal has offered customers a way to link to their bank account or pay directly through PayPal. However, adding in a credit card with the company could significantly help PayPal’s growth efforts. Analysts from the investment bank (SunTrust) say that the deal could potentially bring PayPal an additional $300 million in transaction expenses. The only problem is, for PayPal to take on these additional expenses, they would have to see lifts in payment volume or volume from its cheaper funding sources.

PayPal stock has been doing well in recent months. They’ve showed plans to continue building the company and even planned to have a headquarters in Charlotte, N.C., prior to the HB2 bill being passed. The company is ranked among the top 9 percent of all the stocks when it comes to earnings and growth. Much of the company’s performance in the stock market this year thus far points to having a successful Q1.

The company, which thrives from e-commerce has been taking on a few heavy competitors recently though. Visa and PayPal have seemingly been going head-to-head for some time. PayPal is the new way to pay, while Visa is much more traditional in nature.

More recently, Amazon.com began to gun for PayPal with an announcement about its new way to pay. The online superstore hopes to launch “Amazon Payments,” which will allow for Amazon customers to use Amazon to pay for things on other e-commerce sites. This is a part of a three-year effort by Amazon to continue to grow its payments department. The company hopes that people will begin to use Amazon Payments versus other forms of paying (when online).

The deal with PayPal and Visa may be what saves PayPal if Amazon Payments really takes off. If PayPal decides to pair with Visa (or Mastercard) to start a line of credit for its customers, it will be able to stay afloat in a world that seems to be taken over by Amazon. However, if it decides it will not benefit from the deal, PayPal may have trouble keeping people on board.

PayPal does have a few things going right for it though. Many companies use PayPal to pay its freelance employees (i.e. writers and remote workers). It is also a great way to send last minute cash gifts, pay for items online and even pay at some checkouts in store. The website has certainly grown since it was first launched (its biggest partnership at the time was eBay). However, there needs to be continued growth or the company will fall underneath concepts like Amazon Payments in the future.

Photo: Flickr: G.L. Barone

Amazon.com Releases Video Footage of Prime Air Drone

November 30, 2015 By Amanda Blankenship 1 Comment

Amazon is a premiere online shopping destination. Many people, when they are searching for the perfect gift this season, will take a close look at the prices on Amazon and compare them to prices through other online stores. However, the company recently teased its consumers with a new possibility.

Amazon.com Drone

The company released a video of a new drone design that takes off and lands like a helicopter, but flies like a plane, and it will be delivering your Amazon Prime items. The drone is called Amazon Prime Air.

Videos of the drone were released nearly two years after the company made the announcement that it was going to use drones to deliver parcels to its customers. However, the drone that the company showcased in the video released on Sunday is far different from the one the company showed previously.

Amazon Prime Air will be carrying parcels fuselage rather than below the drone as they had previously discussed. The drone will rise about 400 feet then it will become a streamlined airplane. When it is ready to land, it does just that. It drops vertically, delivers the package, and then it rises vertically to return to its location.

While these things are a bit different from the first drone design, many speculate that the previous drone design will also probably continue. There will probably be a whole variety of designs for different environments.

Currently, the drones are only able to fly up to 15 miles. However, the drone is able to sense any obstacles in its way and may come in handy (in its current state) in a town-to-town basis.

When will the drones be up and running?

Now that Amazon has released designs and has proven its drone to be able to fly, there are still a few things that need to happen before the company is able to use tis drone. The United States Federal Aviation Administration is still deciding on whether or not they will allow commercial use of drones.

U.S. Federal Aviation Administration officials have yet to finalize any rules when it comes to commercial drones. However, proposed rules have said that retailers like Amazon.com would eb allowed to use the drones for deliveries if they followed certain limitations like a weight limit of 55 pounds and only daytime flights.

Amazon said that it had expected rules from the U.S. FAA by this year. However, the administration has still not been able to provide guidelines for this unprecedented delivery service.

“We will deploy when and where we have the regulatory support needed to safely realize our vision,” Amazon officials said. “We’re excited about this technology and one day using it to deliver packages to customers around the world in 30 minutes or less.”

Amazon will be providing free shipping for a majority of its items this holiday season. However, your packages won’t be delivered by drone (sorry). It won’t likely be too long before you’ll see a drone stop by your house to drop off your orders though.

Amazon Prime Delivery Time and Its Impact on Local Businesses

August 20, 2015 By Will Lipovsky 1 Comment

Amazon Prime is a membership-based service offered by Amazon, which provides free two-day shipping with a subscription. It also offers “exclusive access” to movies, Kindle books and music for $99 each year. Current estimates place the number of members as high as 50 million individuals worldwide, with 30 to 40 million subscribers in the U.S. alone.

Recently, Amazon Prime expanded its services by creating Prime Now, a delivery option in certain cities (parts of New York City, Baltimore and Miami) which allow members to order thousands of house hold items such as batteries and paper towels to be delivered within two-hours for free or within an hour (only available in certain zip codes) for $7.99. Now, Amazon has brought its “Prime Now” services to Dallas, currently the largest (geographically-speaking) city to receive this new option.

Currently, Prime Now is only available in select Dallas-area zip codes, but according to a blog entry for Nasdaq, Prime Now will soon be expanded. As well, Prime Now is only available between 8 a.m. and 10 p.m. But is available seven days a week. Extended hours are in consideration.

Amazon’s newest addition is another attempt for the company to compete with other online retailers as well as brick and mortar stores such as Wal-Mart and Target. As described on Nasdaq.com, online retailers have a “low barrier to entry,” and thus attract significant amounts of competitions as well as competition from new services such as taxi-sharing giant Uber.

By creating a service such as Prime Now, Amazon can use this “enhanced delivery strategy” to continue to grow and attract new members. Amazon is fulfilling more customer needs. Expansion of the brand continues.

Though Amazon’s push to dominate the market might prove a win for consumers who can afford its services, the company’s aggression has created many losers. Many offline businesses are suffering. In an article published in The Baltimore Sun, reporters Lorraine Mirabella and Natalie Sherman wrote that,

Traditional retailers have long garbled with how to best adapt and compete in the online shopping age. Amazon’s Prime Now is seen as yet another hurdle for Baltimore’s small merchants.

Thus, though Amazon has set its sights on out-competing more and more resellers.

Indeed, to compete with Prime Now, one grocer told Mirabella and Sherman that she would offer to “drop something off” for her customers. However others, such as president of the Baltimore Development Corporation William H. Cole IV., believe the impact of Prime Now might be minimal. Or at least it is too early to decide how quickly Amazon’s services penetrate the marketplace. Still, the expansion of Prime Now seems to suggest that its services are catching on as quickly as our ever-quickening reliance on mobile technology and the Internet.