The world of payments is changing fast. Many companies--not all of them traditional financial institutions--have transformed the space in recent years with trailblazing technology and ideas.

Amazon: E-Tail Giant In A Payments World

Amazon has long since expanded on its claim as the bookseller of choice--for both print and e-books. Today the site sells everything from clothes and jewelery to toys and high-tech electronics. And now the company has moved into the payments world with a variety of services under the Amazon Payments banner.

The e-commerce giant rolled out in 2008 its Checkout service, which allows Web merchants to accept a customer's Amazon account information for payment and use the Seattle-based company for payment processing. Amazon also recently entered the burgeoning P2P market with Amazon WebPay, which allows customers to send money online via their Amazon accounts to other consumers, using their phone numbers or email addresses.

Amazon, of course, competes directly with its long-time nemesis PayPal to provide many of these payment services, as both seek to dominate the e-commerce landscape. For that reason alone, we can expect to see much more in the way of payments innovation from Amazon in the future.