Amazon Web Service’s Flexible Payments Service (FPS) allows you to accept payments on your website. It supports the processing of payments using credit cards, bank accounts and Amazon Payments account balances.

We first started looking into FPS when we were looking at a payments solution for a side project we had been working on and were ready to release.

The project was already all up and running on AWS so it seemed natural to investigate the possibility of using FPS.

Unfortunately just as we were getting really excited about the benefits of FPS we noticed something we should have spotted away. FPS is only available to companies with a US credit card or those authorised to do business in the US.

So that was that one out of the window so we had to look elsewhere and guess where we ended up. Yup, PayPal it was.

Anyway that’s not our major gripe. The main point of frustration is with AWS itself.

In general the AWS team are amazingly responsive and if you look at what they update/add it is clear that they really listen to the requests that they receive.

However, one of these requests keeps on being glossed over.

When, or rather, is FPS ever going to be rolled out in Europe.

I’m not asking for a date, just confirmation of whether or not this is something they are actually working on. After all it has been over 2 years since FPS was first released in the US.

So please, please, please AWS give us an update on whether or not FPS in Europe is ever going to happen.

Now I know this isn’t going to happen but writing this post has been somewhat cathartic.