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Today's news brings us south of the (U.S.) border to Mexico, where Amazon is currently pushing to roll out a brand new mobile payment service called 'CoDi' backed by the central bank of Mexico, formally known as Banco de Mexico, and informally called Banxico.
A move like this would give Bezos and his company a very strong leg-up on the competition in Mexico since the government of Mexico itself would be backing, in effect, the new CoDi payment platform.
CoDi is aimed at offering both online and in-person payments through the use of their smartphone with no additional charge or retailer fee.
What's interesting here is that Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN) launched its primary online payment processing service, 'Amazon-Pay', back in 2007 and the service has indeed grown since then. Austria, Germany, Spain, France, India, Italy, Japan, and of course, the United States, among many other countries, currently have some form of Amazon-Pay implemented.
It's not quite clear yet if this new service named 'CoDi' in Mexico will differ that much from Amazon Pay or if it will basically be the same thing, just in Mexico. Amazon may be looking to get a headstart on rival Apple Inc (NASDAQ:AAPL) as Apple Pay isn't currently in Mexico, either.
Amazon certainly has its eye on the future with today's news concerning CoDi. Mexico only saw about 4 percent of its retail sales be done online last year, according to research firm Euromonitor International, and Amazon was among the biggest players there. Contrast that with 15-18 percent of U.S. sales being online. If Mexico follows suit with its neighbor to the north, then online transactions are set to skyrocket there, and Amazon could be positioned well to capture not just the eventual online sales, but the payment method too!
The pilot of the program is expected later this month or in early April.
