Over on our sister PaymentsViews.com site, Glenbrook's Russ Jones takes a look at Amazon's just introduced PayPhrase checkout feature.

Jones writes:

I’ve long argued with Glenbrook colleagues that payment cards today are too spend-centric and too easily abused. Maybe the banking industry could learn something from Amazon about both convenience and security."

Amazon Payments has announced Amazon PayPhrase, an easy-to-remember shortcut for consumers paying on Amazon.com and other websites. "With Amazon PayPhrase, online shoppers simply choose their own customized phrase — such as “Knick Knack,” “Home Sweet Home,” or “Jake’s Allowance” — and then enter that phrase along with a PIN to quickly preview their order and complete their purchase. PayPhrase allows Amazon.com customers to checkout across the web with their preferred payment and shipping methods stored at Amazon.com, but without having to share sensitive payment information with multiple websites."

All websites accepting Checkout by Amazon, including DKNY, Jockey, Patagonia, Buy.com, J&R Electronics, and Car Toys, will be offering PayPhrase as a checkout option. Amazon.com customers can create their PayPhrase and start using it today by visiting http://www.amazon.com/payphrase. An introductory video is available that explains the service. READ MORE

Amazon Payments LLC, an Amazon.com company, has announced the availability of the Amazon Mobile Payments Service (Amazon MPS) - saying it provides "developers, merchants and distributors of mobile applications an easy way to process payments from mobile devices and extend Amazon’s 1-Click checkout experience to their customers. Amazon MPS enables tens of millions of Amazon customers to use the existing payment and shipping information in their Amazon.com accounts to make purchases from their mobile devices. To get started using the Amazon Mobile Payments Service, visit http://amazonpayments.com/mps." READ MORE

Amazon Web Services 2009 Startup Challenge includes a prize from Amazon Payments for the AWS Start-Up Challenge finalist with the most creative monetization strategy and use of Amazon Payments solutions. Winner of the Amazon Payments prize will go home with $10,000 in combined cash and Amazon Payments credits. Details here.

Amazon Payments has introduced a free processing offer (through 9/30/09 - subject to certain conditions) for new users of its various payment services.

Amazon Payments has just published a new best practices guide for Checkout by Amazon.

Following yesterday's fee change announcement by Google Checkout, Glenbrook's Scott Loftesness has just posted a look at pricing across the three major online payment providers over on PaymentsViews.com.

What is PaymentsViews.com? It's our newest online site for payments professionals - devoted to analysis, commentary and opinions beyond just the news of the day we cover here on PaymentsNews.com.

CircleUp, a group messaging service for membership Web sites, has launched SmartPay - calling it "a powerful new service for online payments made among members of groups and teams. SmartPay runs on the SmartMessage Platform, an innovative messaging service operating across multiple channels, partner destinations and platforms."

"SmartPay is a service that lets members of teams and groups collect money using credit or debit cards for expenses like coach and teacher's gifts, team banners, group photos, event t-shirts, group transportation, group parties and more that have traditionally been paid with cash and checks." READ MORE

TwitPay, the Twitter-based person-to-person payments service, has announced that it's exiting its beta phase and will be moving "real money" starting today using Amazon Payments.

Working with Amazon Payments, we’ve built a new version of Twitpay that means we don’t have to be the middle-man for your cash. That’s good for you as a user because you don’t have to trust us with your money, you just have to trust Amazon. It’s good for us as a service because it allows us to focus on adding new features and focus on the core of our business."

Amazon.com has announced that the Amazon Flexible Payments Service (Amazon FPS) is now out of beta and also easier to use with Amazon FPS Quick Starts. Using FPS, developers can enable your applications with common payment transactions such as one time payments, recurring payments and pre-payments in hours rather than days. Amazon is also offering free payment processing for a limited time to developers who build an application using Amazon FPS. More info on the Amazon Payments Blog.

Amazon Payments will be holding a webinar this Tuesday, January 13th, beginning at 10 AM Pacific exploring Checkout by Amazon.

[Update: Amazon Payments is also active on Twitter.]

Amazon.com's Payments Team has launched a new blog - the Amazon Payments Blog. Baris Cetinok of the team writes "Our team will post here on this blog on a regular basis – our goal is to share with you the latest news, thoughts, ideas, and inspirations about Amazon Payments. ... We will share stories of consumers, merchants, and developers using Amazon Payments to pay or to get paid." [Editor's note: We've just added the Amazon Payments Blog to our list of other banking and payments-related blogs.]

Yesterday, we noted that Amazon Payments had launched a new, fully featured ecommerce checkout service called Checkout by Amazon along with a new, payments-only service called Amazon Simple Pay. In this post, we take a deeper look at Amazon Simple Pay - which enables third-party web sites to simply enable existing Amazon.com customers to pay using their Amazon payment information. READ MORE

Amazon Payments has launched both Checkout by Amazon, a complete ecommerce checkout solution including payments, shipping, sales tax, promotions, etc., and Amazon Simple Pay , a set of payment-only products that allows websites to enable their customers to use their Amazon.com payment information for payments. A comparison chart shows the key differences between Checkout by Amazon, Amazon Simple Pay, and Amazon's Flexible Payment Service.