Kickstarter has worked with Amazon Payments since the crowdfunding platform started. However in a move that should simplify project creation for makers, and streamline payments for backers, they’ve announced today that they’re taking $500 million in annual pledges to Stripe.
Amazon Payments presented a stumbling block to projector creators as they needed to register with Amazon and create a business account before their project could go live, a process that could take several days, or in some cases several weeks. It also only ever supported payments inside the US—the crowdfunding company was forced to find an alternative provider when it moved to let British makers create projects back in 2012. Backers were also forced to create Amazon payment accounts, a process that sometimes could be problematic for backers based outside the US.
On the other hand Stripe will process both US and international payments, and both creators and backers can be kept onsite instead of being redirected to a separate payment processor which should simplify things for everyone.
The move is a big win for Stripe, who have been on a roll recently—being named back in September as a partner for Apple’s new mobile-payments service, Apple Pay—as well as tying up deals with Twitter, Facebook and Alibaba. Conversely Kickstarter was one of Amazon Payment’s most visible customers, their loss will be keenly felt by the retail behemoth.
Kickstarter should have fully transitioned to Stripe by the end of next week.
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