Amazon Planning to Kindle Merchant Relationships with MPOS

February 4, 2024         By: Kevin Xu

Amazon is planning to introduce its Kindle Fire devices at retail locations as mobile point-of-sale devices for small and medium sized businesses.

The Wall Street Journal reports that Amazon may have plans to offer both hardware and software in the form of the Kindle tablet with payment card-reader and a service focusing on web development and analytics.

According to sources within the online retail giant, these plans aren’t concrete and may be altered or scrapped.

If it comes to fruition, this initiative would plant Amazon firmly in the space of competitors including Square, PayPal, and some other lesser known startups all hoping to grab a piece of that mPOS-dongle action.

It’s a space that is becoming increasingly crowded, though certain competitors such as Square have made headway. Square has shown a steady increase in volume of transactions processed and made some headway by signing on Starbucks as a Square Wallet partner.

It would be very difficult for Amazon to cut a similar sort of deal with a big box national retailer, since Amazon is the same company that is increasingly putting pressure on these retailers with its online shopping service.

Amazon’s best bet would be to entice small and medium-sized businesses to adopt its Kindle devices along with strong incentives for signing on. This would include leveraging Amazon’s Local for daily deals, and promotions on Amazon.com itself.

Despite being the bane of brick-and-mortar stores, if Amazon can help retailers increase sales in the end, it may be an offer that merchants can’t refuse.