To celebrate the launch, existing and new Kindle Fire customers in the UK will receive 400 free Coins - with a value of £4 - deposited into their Amazon accounts today. For customers, Amazon Coins is an easy way to purchase apps and in-app items on Kindle Fire, and for developers it's another opportunity to drive traffic, downloads and increased monetization. With discounts of up to 10% for purchasing Coins in bulk, it's also an opportunity for customers to save money on their app and game purchases.

"Today we are giving Kindle Fire owners £4 worth of Coins to spend on new apps and games, such as Candy Crush Saga and Angry Birds Star Wars. And with discounts of up to 10% when you buy Coins in bulk, this is a great way for customers to save money when they buy apps, games and in-app items", says Mike George, Vice President of Apps and Games at Amazon. "We will continue to add more ways to earn and spend Coins on a wider range of content and activities."

Amazon Coins is set-up as an additional payment option for users, the current payment methods remain and customers can choose whichever payment method they prefer. Amazon's Appstore offers customers a great selection of games and apps, for example popular apps like Minecraft, WeatherPro, Candy Crush Saga, Angry Birds Star Wars II and many more. In addition there is the popular 'Free App of the Day', which offers a paid app for free every day. Customers can purchase Coins by visiting amazon.co.uk/coins.

Jorrit Van der Meulen, Vice President, Amazon Kindle, adds: "Our customers have enjoyed purchasing apps, games and in-app items since the Amazon Appstore store launched last year and we've received great feedback about innovative features like Free App of the Day. Now, customers in the UK can also purchase a broad range of Appstore content using Amazon Coins. We are continuously working to enhance customer benefits and Coins is a great new feature that that we know they will love."

Customers are not the only ones benefiting from Coins: it offers developers another opportunity to drive traffic, downloads and increased monetization. Amazon Appstore developers will earn their standard 70% revenue share when customers make purchases using Amazon Coins. No Coins-specific changes are required for developers with apps and games currently in the Amazon Appstore. In the US, developers have seen a great boost since Coins launched, resulting also in greater selection for Amazon customers. Developers not yet in the Amazon Appstore should submit their app today through the Amazon Mobile App Distribution Portal: developer.amazon.com/welcome.html.

Amazon Coins is the latest offering in an array of services that make Amazon the most complete end-to-end ecosystem for building, monetizing and marketing their apps and games. These capabilities include:

• The ability for app developers to use Amazon Web Services' (AWS) technology platform for their infrastructure needs. Building blocks such as Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2), Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3), and Amazon DynamoDB allow developers to focus on what differentiates their app rather than the undifferentiated heavy lifting of infrastructure.
• In-App Purchasing on Kindle Fire, Android, Mac, PC and web-based games. This enables developers to offer their digital items in apps and games while allowing end users to simply use their Amazon accounts to make the purchase.
• A/B Testing, which helps developers improve app functionality with the ability to simultaneously test two different in-app experiences to determine which is more successful prior to launching to a broad audience.
• GameCircle, which includes capabilities like Achievements, Leaderboards, Friends and Whispersync for syncing games across iOS and Android, including Kindle Fire, and leads to better engagement with games.
• Amazon Appstore, which allows developers to distribute their apps and games to millions of Amazon customers in nearly 200 countries.