I missed the public announcement on this so I’m almost a month late, but this is great news for indie game developers and those trying to put together subscription and micropayment systems for games. Amazon Flexible Payment Service lets you associate tokens with payments, which can then be verified and used to extend subscriptions, purchase in-game items, etc. With pre-paid and post-paid services, you have the flexibility to bundle micropayments or transactions into a batch of payments. Amazon also tells you up-front what your costs will be (per transaction) and how to get discounts.

I had a chance to read about this system (the presenter wasn’t there) at the Amazon Science Fair today and it immediately reminded me of a conversation I’d had earlier with Steven Davis at OGDC Seattle in March, 2007. I’m interested in trying this out in a sandbox, creating payment services for indie games that don’t go through shady payment processors but instead take advantage of Amazon’s web services. All it takes is (free) time.