NYBanker - qudos for your post - incredible how someone who joined this community only a few months ago, with the grand total of 14 posts, feels compelled to have to be obnoxious, instead of just giving a simple one word answer.

DaveInLA - you are correct, the other person you want to send funds to has to register their email address and other details on Amazon Payments.

You can have more than 1 AP account in your name - just slightly modify your first name.
So, for example, David Smith, Dave M. Smith and Davey Smith should all be OK. I use this method, and have had no issues for coming on 3 years.

Then your spouse can have 3 accounts, for example Susan Smith, Sue L. Smoth and Susie Smith.

forextrader - I wasn't aware you could have multiple accounts with slightly different names. I can't remember but do you need different bank accounts for each of these or do you need to use your social security or physical address to set each one up? Sounds a little more risky at first glance or am I missing something?

The problem with multiple accounts is the SS number. It should match between all 3 names. Easy for them to catch and you can have all your accounts closed.

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Just logged into my account and saw a notice that says in order to comply with federal law, AP requires certain info. When I clicked, it only asked for my DOB, which I entered. I've been using the service for a while with the same account and have never been asked for it.

Anyone have any guesses as to where they're going with this?

had the same thing happen to me - this is just Amazon complying with the regulations. I wouldn't be too concerned by this.

Really not that concerned at all with it, but just for argument's sake I wonder if the regulations are new. That would be the only thing that made sense, because if they need to "comply with regulations" wouldn't they have to collect the information when you open the account? Why let you use the service for months and then say, oops, we need more info?

[QUOTE=freetravelguys;19853071]Really not that concerned at all with it, but just for argument's sake I wonder if the regulations are new. That would be the only thing that made sense, because if they need to "comply with regulations" wouldn't they have to collect the information when you open the account? Why let you use the service for months and then say, oops, we need more info?[/QUOTE]

Because rules are forever changing and being updated.

But if you use the same SSN, won't Amazon catch that? You said that you have 3 accounts; are you using the same SSN on all 3? Or did you mistakenly enter an erroneous SSN for the other accounts?

Now they can enforce 18+ age restriction to weed out accounts registered for minors. If you provide wrong DOB for those accounts, they can shut the account as the age can be figured out from SSN relative easily.

Do you have to be 18 to have an account?

Yes

There are over 300 million people out there in the US. SSN only have 9 digits, not too much digits or patterns for the government to play with. So you cannot tell age by looking at SSN.
However, if you know someone SSN, there are database out there you can search for a fee, you can enter the SSN to verify date of birth.

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is everyone sure that if you do the free max amount per year (12k) that amazon won't report it as "earnings" to the IRS if you send it to a friend or family member??


...this could be a huge problem!!

Yes. Not an issue. I believe back when I read their T&C the cut off was somewhere around $36,000.