Places We Love
Attallah and Sammy Hagar both love the excellent margaritas and untouristy beaches on this "cape" in Baja California.
What is Cabo San Lucas?
This company's share price spiked +47% and +30% immediately after announcing two separate Amazon deals in 2021.
What is Affirm?
(congrats David!)
Amazon saved $280M in 2021 expenses by reducing cost-of-payments to this average amount.
What is 95 bps?
This company was originally called Squirrel, with an early product design shaped like an acorn.
What is Square?
This alcoholic drink name was first recorded in the late 1700s, and probably comes from an ancient French practice of mixing various "tailings" into a low-cost beverage.
What is a cocktail? (coquetel)
Frank loves this country because of their "different perspective on almost everything." That might partly have resulted from "sakoku," an abandoned policy limiting travel in and out for more than 250 years.
What is Japan?
A deal with this service will launch the first 3P wallet ever accepted on Amazon, and included an "extra" $235M AWS commitment.
What is Venmo?
(congrats Frank!)
Total number of payment methods currently supported by Consumer Payments, up from just 12 in 2017.
What is 24 payment methods?
This unicorn's business plan earned last place in the Stockholm School of Economics' 2005 entrepreneurship contest.
What is Klarna?
El Picador was the original name of this cocktail, renamed in 1938 to honor showgirl Rita de la Rosa.
What is the margarita?
Rudmila calls this ancient delta destination "an open-air museum with fantastic food." Be sure to try the kushari, the semi-official national dish.
What is Egypt?
This deal provides the payment-processing foundation for Amazon's competitive response to Shopify.
What is Stripe-Santos? (congrats Frank!)
The total number of dollars expected to be processed by Amazon in 2021.
What is ~$750B?
This service for sending money to people in prison received a CFPB fine in 2021 for charging transaction fees as high as 45%.
What is JPay?
This Cuban cocktail dates to the 1500s, when it was made with brandy and named for Sir Francis Drake.
What is the mojito?
(El Draque)
This city has everything David wants in a great destination: food, friends and culture. The root of its name may be the Celtic "Lowonidonjon" for "settlement beside the river that's too wide to cross."
What is London?
When complete, this will be potentially the most-significant payments deal in Amazon's history.
What is Visa?
(good work Jeff!)
The percentage of Amazon payment transactions that fail.
What is ~2%?
This is the biggest payment app in the world, with more than 658M MAUs in September 2021.
What is AliPay?
You can turn a French 75 into a French 77 by adding this "old blossom drink."
What is Elderflower liqueur?
"If Alabama was in Central America" is how Clam describes this "rich coastal" country, thanks to friendly residents and a rural, agrarian culture.
What is Costa Rica?
This complex project is saving $64M in bad debt expenses in year 1, and got Payoneer, WorldFirst, LianLianPay and PingPong to agree to common terms.
What is the Payment Service-Provider Program?
(congrats Rudmila!)
Consumer Payments plans to shift this percentage of transactions from card to APMs by 2030.
What is 33%?
(excluding CBCCs)
The first digital wallet was created in 1997 to enable Finns to "text to buy" this popular American product.
What is Coca-Cola?
This "dated" cocktail was created in the early 1800s, but got its name in the 1880s to avoid confusion with newfangled alternatives.
What is the Old-Fashioned? (Original name: A Whiskey Cocktail Made the Old-Fashioned Way)