Amazon.com Inc. (AMZN) Taking On Square?

Amazon.com Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN) is reaching out to retail stores – the brick-and-mortar types – above and beyond its highly popular Web site. And as smartphones are becoming point-of-sale devices, there has been a push for digital purchase software, and Square, GoPayment by Intuit Inc. (NASDAQ:INTU) and PayPal Here have taken the lead in digital and mobile payment processes.

When there is a chance for a company like Amazon.com Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN) to make some money digitally, one would think that it would pursue it. It is a company that continually looks for ways to diversify its revenue ecosystem, much to the certain delight of investors like billionaire fund manager Ken Fisher of Fisher Asset Management, who had a $590 million stake in Amazon.com at the end of June.

Amazon.com Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN) is certainly not afraid of competition, as there is talk going around that the company is entering this space with its Square and PayPal alternative called Amazon Payments. Through this new technology, smartphone users could pay for their purchases in a retailer through Amazon’s system, which offers a 1.9 percent processing fee – much lower than the going market average of about 2.7 percent. The chatter is that Amazon.com may look to target smaller retail chains and individual merchants – which likely would appreciate the smaller processing fees – which would make it a direct competitor to Square.

It is little secret that Amazon.com Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN) has been looking to develop a brick-and-mortar presence in the retail marketplace, as it has been looking into developing a chain of retail stores, and it’s certainly possible that Amazon.com may be testing its Amazon Payments system to potentially be a primary method of payment in an Amazon.com retail store.  And this might be a perfect time to get into the mobile-payments space – a recent National Retail Federation survey showed that while only about 6 percent of retailers currently have mobile-payment devices online, about half of those surveyed said they will be adding such a sysem over the next 18 months.

The comment from Amazon.com Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN) about these rumors? This shocker: “We do not comment on rumors or speculation.”