Wednesday, February 13, 2013

Naira MasterCard working on Amazon

One of the more pleasant surprises I got after migrating to a Mac was finding out that Apple has a localized store, and receives payments using local cards, or at lease the Naira MasterCard that's quickly becoming the de facto debit card here in Nigeria.

I also got a pleasant surprise wanting to pay for an Android app, and it turned out that Google Wallet also accepts payments using Naira MasterCard.

However, until last week, I avoided buying anything on Amazon, because Amazon had issues with local cards. In general, all my “purchases” on Amazon were books which were on “offer” (USD 0.00, just to be clear). However, last week, I missed getting one book that was free and had gone back to its original price, and wanted to at least get the sample. For some reason (habit, I guess), I clicked on the button to buy instead of the one to send the sample to my device.

I'd already added my card details, but never bothered to remove them from my Amazon account. I was initially appalled that I'd make such a mistake, but when I got the usual email from Amazon with the usual yadda yadda, I just hoped I wouldn't have issues with future “purchases”. When I later launched the Kindle app on my phone, instead of my purchase, I saw a book with Amazon's excuses.

But to my surprise, the payment actually went through, and my bank debited me. I've since gotten value for the payment, and apparently it still works, because I bought another book, and have got that too.

I guess this is good news for someone.

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