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Amazon Allowance
- olympus 11y agoI applaud the effort Amazon is making to expand its influence, and giving kids an Amazon allowance would lock them in because it doesn't look too easy to convert that money back to real cash. But I don't think this one will stick around for very long. Prepaid cash/debit cards and automated deposits are an older and more proven way of doing this (not to mention just handing your kids $20 in cash every week). By giving them something that is accepted everywhere, you teach them how to handle limited amounts of money and how to resist temptations -- if I drop $5 on gas station snacks, I've just burned up a sizeable chunk of my allowance on something that will be gone in 10 minutes. Giving an allowance is great to teach young teenagers how to handle money before they get their own job, but I don't see Amazon breaking into this and locking kids into buying only from Amazon.
- allworknoplay 11y agoKids? I'm pretty sure the real market here is camgirls and other internet personalities that people want to buy presents for.
- philwelch 11y agoYou can already send Amazon gift cards or buy things off someone's Amazon wishlist.
- derefr 11y agoPatreon's innovation was the "monthly recurring donation." That's basically what this is as well. So one could say it's a direct competitor.
- Brian-Puccio 11y agoYeah, that's the first thing I thought of ... seekingarrangement.com sorts of deals.
- blumkvist 11y agoand stream hunnies.
- allworknoplay 11y agonot sure I even wanna know the difference between a cam girl and a 'stream hunny' O.o
- blumkvist 11y agoStream hunnies are cam girls for geeks. They pretend to stream games while flirting with teenage boys ans soliciting donations. Groupies for the modern times we live in, if you wish.
- ilaksh 11y agoJeff Bezos, the world's newest, and wealthiest, pimp.
- valgaze 11y agoThis is an interesting payments case b/c with kiddos in the United States you need to deal with the Children's Online Privacy Act (ie the reason for the "are you 13 years or older" checkbox question) One firm that's was trying to do kid payments was Virtual Piggy (now Oink): http://www.oink.com http://www.oink.com
- derefr 11y ago> the reason for the "are you 13 years or older" checkbox question I thought all the age-of-13 stuff, specifically, was because you can't legally enter yourself into a contract when you're younger than 13. Which is to say, you can't accept EULAs or Terms of Service (or you can, but they'll have no legal force.)
- mikeash 11y agoObviously it depends on the jurisdiction, but typically minors cannot enter legally binding contracts. Some form of source: http://www.lawchek.com/Library1/_books/contract/qanda/legalage.htm http://www.lawchek.com/Library1/_books/contract/qanda/legala... One interesting feature I wasn't aware of is that this does not generally apply to "necessities" or employment contracts.
- Buge 11y agoIt's COPPA. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Children%27s_Online_Privacy_Protection_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Children%27s_Online_Privacy_Pr... Some people even consider COPPA to be a form of censorship. It creates such a huge legal burden on websites if they allow < 13 year olds, that most websites have to ban them, thus limiting their right to speech.
- AntsInMyEyes 11y agoI think kids away at college, especially for freshman year could be another use case. Parents know they are smart enough they probably could make the right financial choices, but just being a freshman in college means they probably won't.
- superuser2 11y agoIf you give teenagers cash, they can't spend it online. Thanks to KYC rules and bank policies, you have to be 18 to get anything that looks like a credit card. Best plan for teenagers is a joint checking account (dedicated to the child's use) at your bank, with a debit card they can use for day-to-day spending. You can do allowance, etc with transfers, and most bankd will play ball as long as one person on the account (the parent) is 18.
- w1ntermute 11y ago> If you give teenagers cash, they can't spend it online. Thanks to KYC rules and bank policies, you have to be 18 to get anything that looks like a credit card. What about those prepaid cards you can buy for cash at B&M stores? I'm pretty sure you can use those online.
- gotrecruit 11y agosometimes those cards don't work for some online stores because there is no address associated with the card, so card verification systems may fail.
- pki 11y agomany online stores i've seen/used actively block those cards due to fraud/chargeback/etc reasons
- derefr 11y agoEvery time I've bought one of those cards, it has me go to a website to register/activate it (set a PIN, associate it with my email address+password, and most importantly, assign it an address and phone number) before it'll work.
- mafuyu 11y agoThat's what I used in high school, but they're not very good value. You'd often need to pay a few bucks in fees just to use a $20 prepaid Visa card.
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- efsavage 11y agoLife lessons aside, it's alot harder to spend your $20/week on weed or booze or gambling when it's an Amazon credit.
- ytdht 11y agoyou can always sell it for 80%+ of it's value for cash or bitcoins... or ask your dealer what he needs from Amazon
- jusben1369 11y agoI wonder if it's solving for my problem where my kids buy a lot of video on demand. I'd like to cap that for each of them each month. It wouldn't hurt if it also was funds they could then use to replace the iPhone charger they break or lose each month.
- pech0rin 11y agoThis seems like a great way to give employees a bit of a perk. An allowance could be used for technical books, and or other learning materials.
- sombremesa 11y agoThis is Amazon we're talking about. The company that doesn't give employees prime, free hardware to take home, or a real employee discount.
- elmin 11y agoAmazons margins are so narrow an employee discount without some sort of cap would be ridiculous.
- sombremesa 11y agoThere is no veil here, and no reason to pretend there is something legitimate preventing Amazon from treating people like human beings. I'm not going to argue with you, unless you tell me you've worked there. Then at least I will attempt to understand why you believed such treatment is acceptable.
- rifung 11y agoIndeed that may be true. But it's still pretty pitiful that they only let you apply your discount to $1000 worth of products a year. That means you save.. $100 each year!
- gohrt 11y agoParent mean that Amazon's customers could use this is a book budget perk.
- simonbarker87 11y agoI think they mean any company for their employees, not specifically amazon - I think Buffer give their employees Amazon gift cards for their Kindles - something like that
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- DanBlake 11y agoWill be interesting if this can be expanded to workers for office supplies and whatnot.
- adanto6840 11y agoCheck out Amazon Business, which appears to allow you to set up multiple users in a hierarchy (including at least some sort of a custom "approvals" system), set thresholds, etc... http://www.amazon.com/b?node=11261610011 http://www.amazon.com/b?node=11261610011 Not sure if it's new or not, recently got a call about getting into it though we declined as we're a small shop & already happy with the level of service we get via Prime.
- gnoway 11y agoAKA the Amazon Reverse Microloan program.
- falcolas 11y agoThis would be fantastic for use with AWS, give developers a monthly balance to spin up their choice of environments. Could be pretty awesome.
- joshstrange 11y agoEspecially since rollover is built in.
- floridaguy01 11y agogreat product landing page. Loads quick and lots of information. Works great on mobile. 10/10
- dc-tech-fan 11y agoI want this for something like Fiverr. Instead of my kids accumulating more junk, they learn the skills of hiring and delegating. Don't want to mow the lawn in this heat? Use your allowance to somebody else to do it. As long as the job is done they will earn their allowance. I just need a way to make sure they're not outsourcing their homework or paying somebody buy them alcohol.
- mentat 11y agoI find this disturbing in a way I can't quite quantify. Kids should do things, not just appear to do things because they're clever about outsourcing to someone worse off.
- derefr 11y agoHiring and managing someone else, while being the point-of-contact with your clients, is doing a thing; it's a very useful life-skill, in fact. There are other useful life-skills they might be better off not delegating away the learning opportunities for, of course, but usually "chores" are less learning experiences and more "I used to do this thing, but now you're old enough to take the load off me." Of course, if there's no life-lesson, why not just cut out the middle-man and have a local chore marketplace where kids from all around the neighbourhood can directly bid on the contract to mow your lawn. (Mostly kidding, but that'd be somewhat interesting for people who don't have kids, and don't need a full-on gardener.)
- chrsstrm 11y agoHere's a little life lesson that was kicked down to me: "Don't ever ask/command/order someone to do something that you would not do yourself." Interpret how you like, but to me it means, "Get your hands dirty and appreciate what it takes to do a job before you delegate."
- mentat 11y agoI tend to think that doing physical work, understanding what's involved, is educational, informative, and motivating. A significant part of the world does work with their body. It's important in having empathy for other "classes" (assuming your kid gets an "information worker" job). Related or not, it's important to also learn how to do a job you may not like well, to pursue excellence in one's work.
- jkestner 11y agoHow about teaching them about saving? It'd be nice if this was interest-bearing.
- nlake44 11y agoI don't understand how Amazon can afford to maintain so many projects given their revenue is so low (https://finance.yahoo.com/q/is?s=AMZN&annual https://finance.yahoo.com/q/is?s=AMZN&annual). Someone care to explain?
- hiddencost 11y ago90 billion is low? Or are you talking about income? They can afford so many projects because they're making an enormous amount of money and shoveling it all back into these projects.
- elwell 11y agoCool idea, I think they might have trouble reaching their target audience though.
- dkhenry 11y agoI like the idea, but I would really like to see a bank or another finical institution offer some services that I can use as a modern introduction to banking for my kids. When I was a kid I had a savings account, and a savings book that I took to the bank to do all my banking. All my deposits and withdrawls were printed into the book by the teller and it was easy enough for me to fill out deposit slips for the checks and cash my family gave me or I earned doing jobs around the neighborhood. Let my kids have a debit card and let them use ATM's and smart phone apps just like I do, even better if its designed to be useable by children to encourage good banking behaviors.
- nmridul 11y agoSimple paypal alternative that is free .... Could not find any fee info, so should be free... Then this could easily be used for accepting payments for services or sales. Since I anyways spend on amazon, better accept payments this way without any fee...