Amazon’s influence on the internet economy appears to be coming next for currency. The e-commerce giant is preparing to launch a “digital currency” project in Mexico.
The not-yet-announced project, which Amazon outlined in a number of recently published job vacancies, appears to be an attempt to keep lucrative Prime customers on Amazon’s platform forever.
“With this product, customers can convert their money into a digital currency that customers can use to use online services such as purchasing goods and / or services such as Prime Video,” said a job advertisement about Amazon’s “new payment product”.
Amazon’s Digital and Emerging Payments (DEP) division plans to initially launch the product in Mexico. A second job advertisement suggests that the product is apparently largely geared towards emerging markets. Amazon is hiring software development engineers “at all levels” to prepare employees for takeoff.
The DEP team and Amazon did not respond to repeated requests for comments.
It is not clear how much Amazon’s planned foray into digital currencies has in common with “Amazon Coins”. This 8 year old virtual currency initiative allows owners to trade money spent by Amazon across web games.
