When the online marketplace giant made the announcement, PayPal started taking an immediate hit.
PayPal shares have been falling since last week when Amazon announced to its users that the popular mobile payments service owned by PayPal, Venmo, would no longer be an accepted transaction method on its site or app.
Amazon announced that the changes to the transaction method acceptance would start January 10.
Though Venmo hasn’t yet been cut off for shoppers making mobile payments on Amazon, PayPal is already suffering from the decision as its stock price felt the damage. Venmo will be officially cut off as a transaction method on Amazon as of January 10, according to a notice that Amazon customers were issued from the company.
That said, it is not the brand in its entirety that is being banned from Amazon. The Venmo credit and debit cards will still be accepted by the online marketplace. That detail was announced by Venmo in a separate notice it added to its website.
Amazon’s announcement that it would not be accepting Venmo mobile payments did not specifically explain why.
“Due to recent changes, Venmo can no longer be added as a payment method,” said the message posted on the Venmo website. “Venmo will remain available to users who currently have it enabled in their Amazon wallet until 01/10/24.”Form Id not found. Please copy paste the correct shortcode text.
This particularly move was an unexpected one for man, as it was a stark reversal of the direction Amazon had previously been taking. As recently as October, Amazon had announced that it would be adding Venmo as a checkout payment method, as a part of its efforts to provide its customers with more options for paying for the products they want to buy. Venmo is a highly popular transaction service as it provides users with the ability to send money to companies as well as to each other.
A spokesperson for Amazon has confirmed that the change is coming, underscoring that customers would still have other types of mobile payments methods available. They stated that there were “nearly a dozen other payment methods,” even after Venmo is removed. That said, it did not provide additional details as to why the change was made.