Amazon.com Launches Honor Payment System

Posted on February 7, 2001

Amazon.com has announced the launch of the Amazon Honor System. The Amazon Honor System enables online visitors to ``tip'' their favorite websites or to pay for access to premium content. The concept was first used as a method of payment for downloads of The Plant, Stephen King's serialized novel. With the launch of the new payment service, Amazon is now offering the payment method to other authors and content providers.

Based on Amazon.com's 1-Click shopping technology, the system allows fans of authors or websites to give as little as $1 with a click of the mouse. Websites can also sell access to online or downloadable content such as video, music or textual material including news, poetry, short stories, commentaries and literature. According to Amazon.com, any website can sign up for the service and begin collecting contributions in less than 15 minutes.

Amazon.com founder and CEO Jeff Bezos says in a statement, "People want to support the sites they love -- the Amazon Honor System makes it safe and easy. Now, any website can effortlessly collect money from appreciative users. Over time, we hope this will be even more successful than our Associates program, which now has over 600,000 participating Web sites."

The Amazon Honor System is open to any website and does not charge any registration or set-up fees to participating websites. Amazon.com plans to make its money from the transactions. Websites using the service are charged 15% of the total payment per transaction plus $.15. Launch partners include a group of more than 50 websites, offering everything from humor and poetry to recipes and help with math. A list of the fifty launch partners is provided at the end of this article.

``It takes an Amazon.com -- with its trusted brand and millions of successful transactions -- to bring the benefits of 1-Click contributions to Web sites of all shapes and sizes,'' said Chank Diesel, president and CEO of Chank.com. ``With the Amazon Honor System, sites like mine have the ability to continue providing innovative and creative content to our fans and customers.''

When visiting a website that participates in the Amazon Honor System, visitors are greeted with a paybox featuring a ``Click to pay'' or ``Click to give'' button. Although, the paybox recognizes Amazon.com customers, the company claims that no information relating to the customer is provided to any participating site. Amazon.com does not charge any additional fees to the person who is making the payment. Customers using the paybox can take advantage of a full and unconditional money-back guarantee up to 30 days after payment by using Amazon.com's Unpay feature, which provides no-questions-asked refunds.

Note: The system came to an in 2008 according to a report from Betanews. It did help some small sites generate revenues and helped raise money for the Red Cross after Hurricane Katrina and other disasters.



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