Amazon Payments account holders are required to provide a Date of Birth
Just got an e-mail from Amazon stating:
"To ensure compliance with federal law, Amazon Payments account holders are required to provide a Date of Birth. You must provide this information before Sunday, March 31st, 2013 to ensure your account activity is not interrupted..."
The same statements can be found on this site:
https://payments.amazon.com/sdui/sdui/helpTab/Personal-Accounts/User-Agreement-Policies/Federal-Regulations
My question is: Why do they need date of birth? Perhaps they want to confirm that one is "over 18" but this still seems odd - and doesn't seem to be in response to any federal law that I know about (but I'm not a lawyer)
What's even more lame is when you click on the FAQ / and the question: "Why do you need my date of birth?" you will find the answer: "To make sure of compliance with federal laws, Amazon Payments Personal Account holders and some Business Account holders are required to provide their date of birth." Patriot act, at a guess - transfers of $10k or more are required to be accompanied per personal identifying information, and Amazon may also be required to collect PII to the extent that it's viewed as a broker, collecting money on behalf of others for distribution thereto. But I can't tell you for sure which law; most likely you're hearing about it now because either a new regulation has been promulgated or as a result of some holding in a recent court case.