Travis Vocino Experiments in Art, Science & Technology.

A lot of people pay me via PayPal. It’s easy for me, easy for them, everyone is happy — except that PayPal is dog shit. I won’t go into exactly how, just know anyone that uses it does so because it’s currently the most adequate option.

### Amazonian Love ###

Fortunately, there is now Amazon Web Services — internet cool kid bully to Google Checkout and PayPal. Paul put it well, in a nutshell, FPS is everything Amazon has learned about dealing with money transactions, processing credit cards and more, wrapped in a shiny API.

I really like Amazon for some reason. I’m not sure if it’s just from watching E-Dreams a million times or because they have a really nice brand that keeps getting nicer with every web service they release. Something though — they are neat.

### No Longer Ghetto Billing ###

The real reason, as odd as it sounds, is you feel somewhat under-gunned while using PayPal as a real billing solution. I’m not about to create a full-scale merchant platform with some bank, complete with PayFlowPro and a lot of contracts for each card type, just to provide a convenience for some clients who wish to pay electronically. Although that would be rather neato, it’s just not cost-effective (read: smart) for the amount of transaction processing I require.

Maybe it’s just me but there’s somewhat of a stigma in using PayPal these days. It still feels like the “AAA++++ #111 eBayer would buy again would recommend++++” payment solution, and don’t get me started on how much I despise eBay.

I did consider using Google Checkout quite a bit and if Amazon wasn’t in the running, I believe they do stand above PayPal and would be the next viable processing option.

For some reason, Amazon seems more in-tune with new well-made services than even Google right now. Even if that statement is just my current perception, it does say something about the work they’re doing over there.