Amazon is shutting down Square competitor Register

Just a year after launching the service, Amazon is shutting down its mobile point-of-sale system, Amazon Register.

Starting today, Amazon says it will no longer take on new Register customers. Those already using Register have until February 1, 2016 to migrate over to another point of sale. After that date, Amazon will kill its Register service altogether. Merchants will have access to their transaction history until February 28, 2016.

[aditude-amp id="flyingcarpet" targeting='{"env":"staging","page_type":"article","post_id":1831544,"post_type":"story","post_chan":"none","tags":null,"ai":false,"category":"none","all_categories":"business,commerce,","session":"A"}']

Register is a credit card-reading device that plugs into smartphones and was intended to compete with other low-cost mobile point-of-sale systems aimed at small businesses — like Square, PayPal, and Etsy. However, processing payments is an exceedingly difficult business to make money in and often operates on thin margins. In order to succeed in the space, service providers need to have clients with high sales volumes, which rules out many small businesses. Amazon charged transaction rates that were cheaper than its competitors, meaning it likely wasn’t earning much off the service. It may have even been losing money on the venture — not an uncommon prospect for Amazon.

The company didn’t offer much in the way of explanation for the closure: “Amazon is constantly testing and launching new services to innovate on behalf of our customers. At this time, we have decided to discontinue the Amazon Register service,” the company told VentureBeat in a statement.

The news comes on the same day that Amazon sunsets its daily deals site, Amazon Local.