Amazon Wallet for Android debuts with support for gift cards

Amazon has silently released a new app for Android, which is already available in both the Play Store as well as the retailer’s own Appstore. It’s called Amazon Wallet, but despite the name it doesn’t let you make mobile payments, nor can it store your credit and debit cards.

For now, what it does do is act like a storage space for your various gift and loyalty cards from different stores, with options to organize those as you see fit. The app is still in beta, though, so more functionality is expected to come in the future.
You can either scan or type your gift cards, loyalty cards, and membership cards, letting you travel with less of those in your purse or pocket. After you add them to the app, the cards are available as a barcode, QR code, text, or image.
For “supported merchants”, you can check the balance of your stored cards. And you can view and organize them on the Web too, if you so choose. Amazon Wallet will come preinstalled on the Amazon Fire Phone, yet for now it’s clearly just a first step in the direction of being a one-stop wallet solution for people. Competitors such as Google Wallet do more at this point, but Amazon’s app should get better with time.