Amazon Pay

Overview

Amazon Pay enables customers to check out on third-party e-commerce websites using their Amazon account, leveraging the shipping addresses and payment methods already stored in their Amazon profile. It appears as an alternative checkout button alongside traditional payment forms, reducing friction by eliminating the need for customers to re-enter payment and shipping details.

What This Script Does

Amazon Pay loads its SDK from static-na.payments-amazon.com (or region-specific equivalents: static-eu.payments-amazon.com for Europe). The SDK renders the Amazon Pay button and manages the checkout widgets — address book, wallet, and consent widgets.

The checkout flow operates as follows:

1. Button rendering — The SDK renders the branded "Amazon Pay" button on the merchant's page
2. Authentication popup — When clicked, a popup window opens to payments.amazon.com where the user authenticates with their Amazon credentials
3. Address and wallet selection — After authentication, embedded widgets display the user's saved shipping addresses and payment methods for selection
4. Order confirmation — The merchant's server receives a tokenized reference (Order Reference ID) for the selected payment method — not the actual card details
5. Payment processing — The merchant's backend calls Amazon Pay APIs to authorize and capture the payment using the tokenized reference

Cookies set include:

• Session cookies under the merchant's domain to maintain the checkout flow state (which step the user is on, selected address and payment method references)
• amazon-pay-abtesting-ams-mango — A/B testing cookie for Amazon Pay's own button rendering optimization; short-lived
• Authentication state cookies within the payments.amazon.com popup for the Amazon login session

The SDK contacts payments.amazon.com, api.amazon.com, and static-na.payments-amazon.com during the checkout process. All payment data is handled through Amazon's PCI-compliant infrastructure — the merchant never receives or processes raw card numbers.

Amazon Pay does not set advertising cookies, build retargeting audiences, or share browsing behavior with Amazon's advertising division. The data flow is strictly limited to payment processing and order fulfillment.

Consent & Compliance

Amazon Pay is classified as essential. It is a payment processing service — a core function that users explicitly invoke to complete purchases.

Under the GDPR, payment processing is justified under contract performance (Article 6(1)(b)). The user initiates a purchase and selects Amazon Pay as their payment method, making the processing of their payment and shipping data necessary to fulfill the contract. Amazon acts as a data processor for payment handling.

Under the ePrivacy Directive, the cookies set during the Amazon Pay checkout flow are strictly necessary for a service explicitly requested by the user. The session cookies maintaining checkout state, authentication cookies for the Amazon login popup, and the tokenized payment references all serve the payment processing function. Article 5(3) exempts them from consent requirements.

Under CCPA/CPRA, Amazon Pay processes personal information (shipping address, payment method references) solely for payment processing. Amazon's role is as a service provider for the transaction. No personal information is sold or shared for advertising purposes.

Should You Block This Without Consent?

No. Amazon Pay is a payment processing service explicitly initiated by users who choose it as their checkout method. Its cookies and scripts are strictly necessary for completing transactions. Blocking Amazon Pay would prevent customers from using their preferred payment method, harming the purchase experience without providing any privacy benefit.