No one is talking about the biggest threat to Amazon since Wi-Fi outages

There’s been a lot of talk about Amazon in the news lately, with quite a few people commenting on its insurmountable dominance in the world of online shopping, whether its market position constitutes a monopoly, and how it will inevitably devour everything in its path. I don’t know why the hell they haven’t built a nationwide high-speed ISP, because people buy more things when pages load faster, and Comcast is a reviled pariah despised by all. Argh.

But I digress. There’s actually quite a significant threat to Amazon’s business model, one that has only been recently developed, and apparently no one seems to have realized this. Its position is now more vulnerable than its colossal reputation would imply.

For all its cultural ubiquity, Amazon’s supposed “monopoly” rests exclusively on two factors:

The first major advantage is Amazon’s comprehensive selection. You can buy just about anything on Amazon, so there’s really no need to go anywhere else. You could easily find those products in other stores, but you might get stuck paying multiple shipping fees from several different sites. The fact that Amazon sells both cooking utensils and baby shoes means you can more often group purchases together to save on shipping costs. This advantage is unlikely to be challenged anytime soon.

The second advantage is that you’re already a customer. If you’ve ever shopped with Amazon, they’ve got your shipping address and payment information on file. By contrast, placing a first order at a new site requires entering all that info, checking for typos, and maybe even signing up for an account. Since the products and prices are quite often the same anyway, there’s very little reason to bother with the extra hassle.

It’s this second factor that’s more at risk. If someone can figure out a way to simplify the payment process, so that it somehow doesn’t require typing up all that purchase info every time you place an order at a new site, it would completely level the playing field in terms of convenience.

And someone has indeed figured this out. And it’s probably the biggest threat to Amazon’s business model since…well, ever. It’s Apple Pay.

The recent announcement of Apple’s pay-with-your-phone service has been met with calm interest, mainly for its potential to provide increased security. In light of recent credit card data breaches which exposed millions of customer credit card numbers, this is a serious incentive, for customers, businesses, banks, and law enforcement officials alike. It is a very big deal.

But the business potential it represents for all non-Amazon web stores is huge. Since the payment information and shipping address are stored by Apple, customers never have to enter this information into the form; all they have to do is find something they want, and press the Touch ID button. What once took a few minutes will be reduced to a click or two.

This is especially significant for mobile shopping, since a smartphone screen is the worst possible place to type your address and credit card info. Even on a tablet with larger keys, it’s still more difficult than using a real keyboard. Autocorrect can only spell-check, so it can’t fix any errors you typed into your street address. It’s easier just using the Amazon mobile app.

Apple Pay fixes this problem completely. Buying from any Apple Pay-enabled web store would be just as fast and convenient as buying from Amazon. If individual stores offer generous free shipping policies as well, they’d knock out the only other advantage Amazon can provide.

This won’t be limited to mobile payments. Plenty of web traffic still occurs on laptops and desktops, and although Apple Pay has the potential to shift more purchases to mobile by providing a much more convenient payment option, there’s no reason to miss out on the rest.

I bet that soon enough we’ll see a MacBook with Touch ID in the F key. Or maybe J. It won’t be your thumb that provides the fingerprint this time, because your thumb rests on its side when you’re using a keyboard. Pointer fingers would work better.

Mobile will be where Apple Pay has the most significant impact, however. There are far more iPhones than MacBooks in the world, and the additional convenience of not having to type things on a phone is far more significant than it is on a laptop. Besides, maybe the laptops won’t have Touch ID, and you’ll enter your thumbprint on your phone, and your computer will read it via Bluetooth. This means mobile represents the most significant business opportunity for anyone trying to capitalize on the impact.

This will inevitably lead to the rebirth of price comparison websites. Imagine, for example, a website and accompanying app that amalgamated products exclusively from Apple Pay-enabled stores, which duplicated Amazon’s in-store bar code scanner. You’d get the product you want at the lowest available price, and you wouldn’t have to sign up for one account after another by shopping this way.

You could even show estimated shipping times based on warehouse location, using the customer’s address to rank the stores according to the shipment’s estimated arrival time. East Coast shoppers could buy from East Coast businesses, and West Coast shoppers could buy from West Coast businesses. You could very likely get an upgrade to 2-day shipping at no extra charge, simply by shopping semi-local.

It could be some scrappy startup that does this, or it could be…Apple. They’d easily be able to leverage their massive position and hundreds of millions of customers and create iBuy in a matter of months.

It could also be Amazon. They already sort of do this, by allowing third-party businesses to list products on their site. They could simply build the additional service that allows customers to shop around at non-Amazon stores. They’d profit from the transaction, even if they lose the actual customer. Amazon’s margins are slim anyway, so this might not even represent a loss for them.

The point is, somebody’s gonna do it. If you want it to be you, then you’d better get started.