Amazon Web Services has announced that "it has achieved Level 1 compliance with the Payment Card Industry (PCI) Data Security Standard (DSS). Merchants and other service providers can now run their applications on AWS PCI-compliant technology infrastructure to store, process and transmit credit card information in the cloud."

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.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 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.

Last wee, Amazon.com announced a new Amazon Flexible Payments Service Marketplace Widget that provides developers the ability to create a widget for moving money between two other parties, with complete control of fees paid to the developer. Money moves from buyer to seller, and the seller pays a fee to the developer. The fee can be a fixed amount and/or a percentage of the transaction. Amazon also added several other features to FPS including instant payment notification and new transaction details including providing the buyer's email address to the seller.

For some time, Amazon.com has offered merchants Fulfillment by Amazon - where they could have Amazon hold their goods for shipment at Amazon's fulfillment centers. Now, Amazon's introduced a new Fulfillment Web Service that enables merchants to programmatically manage their inventories, replenishment and shipment activities using FBA. "Products that are fulfilled by Amazon qualify for all of Amazon's buyer shipping and customer promotions (such as free Super Saver shipping and Amazon Prime) and Amazon takes care of customer service and returns." More on the Amazon Web Services blog.