Amazon.com (NASDAQ:AMZN) announced today a new feature coming to its mobile app called “Amazon Pay Places” that will allow users to pay for in-store items and order meals for pick-up using their Amazon account payment information.
Amazon Pay Places will allow consumers to use the app to pay for things in the real-world instead of using cash, check, credit or debit cards. In the future, the feature will available for use in a variety of stores, such as Whole Foods Market (NASDAQ:WFM) which Amazon acquired recently.
The retail giant is offering a limited launch of the meal ordering part of the feature, however. Users can only make pay-ahead food orders for one company, TGI Friday’s, at locations in Boston; Baltimore; Washington D.C.; Richmond, Virginia; and Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania.
This feature expands upon the company’s current “Amazon Pay” checkout option, which functions similarly to PayPal (NASDAQ:PYPL) . It allows retailers to add a button for the payment platform during online check out, making online shopping faster.
While Amazon doesn’t disclose how many merchants use their Amazon Pay feature, the company announced in February that over 33 million customers used the payment platform. That figure represents a 10 million increase from the 23 million reported users in April 2016.
Amazon Pay Places will compete with other mobile pay apps, like Apple’s (NASDAQ:AAPL) Apple Pay and Samsung (KS:005930) Electronics’ (OTC:SSNLF) Samsung Pay. The competition is currently fierce as mobile wallet apps have low adoption rates. Only about 4% of mobile users use mobile wallets.
Amazon has not yet announced when Amazon Pay Places will reach additional markets or gain new partners.
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