Amazon pulls beta tag from PayPal foe

Amazon's Flexible Payments Service has been taken out of its 19-month run as a limited beta, opening the online vendor's payment infrastructure to everyone.

To get things rolling, it's also launched Amazon FPS Quick Starts, a series of APIs to make it easier for developers to include fancy transaction processing tricks like recurring payments and pre-payments for their internet-driven business.

Although there's no start-up charges and subscription charges, Amazon FPS takes a cut from sellers on a per-transaction basis depending on the size of the transaction and payment method and an additional set fee. Amazon's take is lower if an Amazon Payments account is used, but higher for credit cards. A transaction fee guide is available here.

Amazon FPS Quick Starts is composed of five packages that allow different for different types of transactions:

Basic Quick start allows one-time payments for online transactions. Advanced Quick Starts provides periodic or delayed payments. Marketplace Quick Starts helps facilitate transactions between third party buys and seller and gives control over who pays the transaction fee. Account Management Quick Start simplifies putting account activity and information on websites and exiting applications.

As a honey pot for developers, those who sign up for FPS by March 15 and launch their applications by June 1 get Amazon's processing fee waived for the first 90 days or until the transaction volume reaches $500,000. ®