In what can be seen as a move to accommodate the reluctant online buyer, Amazon has come up with this interesting and practical idea. You don’t want to use your credit or debit card online for fear of security? No problem. Just walk into the nearest Amazon authorized retail outlet and pay cash and show your Amazon barcode on you mobile and the amount gets instantly credited to your Amazon account. You can go ahead make purchases online on Amazon.
Launched only last week, this scheme, Amazon Cash is now available only for the buyers in the US but as it is evident, it won’t take long before it is extended to the other markets like India as well.
The tech giant has nominated 10,000 retail counters across the US as the authorized ones to collect Amazon Cash. These include popular stores like CVS, Speedway where people frequent even otherwise and won’t find any difficulty accessing.
The Amazon Cash bar code can be downloaded through the app and saved on your mobile. Once you are at one of the participating retail outlets, all you have to do is show the cashier the barcode that has to be scanned and pay that amount to the cashier.
The entire amount will reflect instantly on your Amazon account and this service is absolutely free. The cash is added as an Amazon gift card. The cash cannot be withdrawn and only purchases can be made against the credit.
The retailers have been fixed some limits to accept cash on a daily basis and the customers can deposit any amount between $15 and 500 in a day.
While this feature may take some time to come to India, ecommerce majors in India like Paytm, ShopClues too, are experimenting with various online-offline models to make the entire experience of online shopping seamless and accessible to all.