Payments Watch

Wow this didn’t take long - social finance site Buxfer has added peer to peer payments to its list of features by using Amazon’s new Flexible Payments Service (FPS). Hmmm, I wonder if they had access to some early Beta’s??? …I suppose it is only fitting that a first class application of Amazon’s FPS would be implemented at Internet speed.

Buxfer is a web 2.0 style application that allows its users to track and tag your expenses with friends and groups - socialized personal expense management. I believe Wesabe considers Buxfer a competitor, although others suggest it most resembles Billmonk. A couple points of interest here:

(1) Unlike what one may imagine as the primary use of Amazon’s FPS where the provider is the recipient of the funds (e.g. online merchant), this is an implementation of a payment application where the provider is neither the sender nor recipient of funds, i.e. Buxfer enables the movement of money between third parties.

(2) The fact that Billmonk was sold to Obopay makes me wonder when Amazon’s FPS will be used to fasciliate peer to peer payments via mobile.

You can read a little more about Buxfer’s implementation of Amazon’s FPS at Techcrunch.