Monday, April 22, 2013
The Amazon application describes a mobile system for transactions in which the buyer does not have to disclose personal information to the seller. Servers acting for an independent third party act as an intermediary providing electronic tokens to authorize payments while holding and securing the otherwise undisclosed personal information of the two parties.
The system would allow consumers and retailers to conduct transactions without revealing information commonly required for electronic transactions to occur: name, telephone number or email, for example. The patent application states, "The techniques and systems provide a safe and reliable mechanism for user to make payments or receive payments while maintaining their anonymity."
The system would also allow anonymous transactions to be initiated by either the buyer or seller. Both parties are required to have an account with the intermediary to conduct the anonymous transaction (presumably this would be Amazon).
The system described in the patent application would, among other things, incorporate a short message service text message from the buyer, reserve payment in an account unavailable to the buyer, create a token to enable the buyer to make an anonymous payment without sharing personal information with the seller, and transfer the payment amount from the buyer to the seller. The token must be redeemed within a fixed period.
Payment attorney Adam Atlas said Amazon's patent application could indicate the retailer is ready to challenge Bitcoin and other virtual currencies. As interest in bitcoins grows, however, the currency is gathering government scrutiny because of a potential avenue it provides for money laundering and purchase of illegal goods. He added that security and value of such currencies remain open to question, as well.
"This Amazon patent has kind of got Bitcoin written all over it because it is aimed at one of the big selling points of Bitcoin: it is anonymous," Atlas said. "I think the issues you find with Bitcoin are similar to what lies ahead for Amazon if it adopts an anonymous payment system."
According to Atlas, people typically seek anonymity in transactions for four reasons: they are buying something illegal, ashamed of a particular purchase, philosophically opposed to revealing personal information in a monetary transaction, or do not trust the seller.
Atlas also noted that these payments would not be truly anonymous because the intermediary in the Amazon patent application would hold the user information. "Anonymous is not what it is advertised to be," he said. If Amazon were to implement its anonymous payment system, it would still likely have to report suspicious transactions and payments of more than $10,000 to the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network and other regulatory agencies, he said. 
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