Amazon Flexible Payments Service

The Quick Start implementation covered in this guide is one of five different Quick Start implementations that make up the Amazon Flexible Payments Service. Amazon FPS is the first payments service designed from the ground up specifically for developers. This set of web service APIs differs from other Amazon Payments products, such as Amazon Simple Pay and Checkout by Amazon, in that it allows the development of highly customized payment solutions for a variety of businesses. Amazon FPS is built on top of Amazon's reliable and scalable payments infrastructure and provides developers with a convenient way to charge the tens of millions of Amazon customers. Amazon customers can pay using the same login credentials, shipping address and payment information they already have on file with Amazon.

For buyers, the advantage of using Amazon FPS payment instruments in online purchases includes the following:

Convenience—Consumers can use their Amazon.com account to complete payments on a web site without having to re-enter their shipping address or payment information.
Trusted payment experience—The secure and trusted payment experience consumers enjoy on Amazon.com is available for your web site.
Purchase protection for buyers—Consumers can feel more confident purchasing, knowing that they have the same protection under the Amazon A-to-z Guarantee that they have when they shop on Amazon.com.

For sellers, the advantage of using Amazon FPS includes the following:

Flexibility—Amazon FPS offers immense flexibility by allowing you to define terms and conditions specific to each transaction. It also gives you control over when the payment transaction is executed.
Access to Amazon customers—Amazon FPS enables tens of millions of existing Amazon customers to transact online, simply using the same accounts and payment methods that they use for purchases on Amazon.com.
Increased customer base—Amazon's trusted payment experience, A-to-z Guarantee, and the ease with which tens of millions of Amazon customers can pay on a web site will help increase the total number of Amazon customers.
Lower cost with Amazon’s proven fraud detection—Amazon FPS leverages Amazon's proven fraud detection capabilities, chargeback controls, and risk management processes to reduce bad debt.
Reliable and secure payments platform—Amazon has spent over a decade developing, testing, and operating a reliable, scalable and secure payments infrastructure to support millions of daily transactions.
Amazon FPS exposes this robust infrastructure to you and your customers.

Amazon FPS has five Quick Start implementations, each providing a different slice of Amazon FPS functionality:

Name	Description
Basic	Facilitates one time payment between a buyer and a developer who is also the merchant for e-commerce, digital content, donations, services.
Marketplace	Facilitates one time payment between buyer and merchant where you are a third party developer, a caller, who hosts the merchant's products and order pipeline. With a unique three-party transaction model, payments can be processed in which you are neither the buyer nor the seller. You can charge a fee for such transactions.
Advanced	Facilitates multiple or recurring payments.
Aggregated Payments	Facilitates aggregated micro-transactions into a single, larger transaction using prepaid and postpaid capabilities.
Account Management	Accesses buyer and developer account activity programmatically. Alternatively, view account activity and balances can be viewed on the Amazon Payments web site.

You can use these parts separately or in combination. They share a common WSDL and schema.