Stripe just got a heap of cash to work on Buy Buttons with Visa. (And the payment upstart is now worth $5 billion.)

Some of that money will make its way to Amazon. Money has a way of drifting over to Amazon, whether through purchases at its store, or web services, or fees based on its one-click patent.

That’s right, one-click, the internet’s impulse buy.

Back in 1997, Bezos and Co. patented purchasing an item using “a single action.” It covers more than just clicking on the internet, mentioning sound (speech, as with the Amazon Echo) and using a TV remote (but not tapping a phone.) From U.S. Patent No. 5,960,411:

17. The method of claim 11 wherein the single action is clicking a mouse button when a cursor is positioned over a predefined area of the displayed information.

18. The method of claim 11 wherein the single action is a sound generated by a user.

19. The method of claim 11 wherein the single action is selection using a television remote control.

20. The method of claim 11 wherein the single action is depressing of a key on a key pad.

21. The method of claim 11 wherein the single action is selecting using a pointing device.

22. The method of claim 11 wherein the single action is selection of a displayed indication.

Claim 11 lays out various definitions around ordering an item, and the steps above discuss the “single action” aspects.

Rejoiner.com estimated back in 2012 that the patent was worth “billions” to Amazon, mostly from increased sales by its own customers. Apple has been paying Amazon for use of it in iTunes and elsewhere since 2000. This has made some money from iPhone users buying apps with a single click.

Do all the “Buy Buttons” preloaded with your payment information, which are proliferating madly across the internet, pay the same fee? No wonder Amazon had such a good quarter.

Derek Corcoran, chief experience officer at Avoka, which develops frictionless (or less friction-y) customer acquisition for financial services companies, pointed this out to Bank Innovation today. Financial services companies see application abandonment rates as high as 58% — Amazon sees much lower rates, thanks in part to one-click, but it doesn’t disclose numbers.

Roemmele commented that Apple, for one, is looking for a way around Amazon’s one-click stranglehold: “Some new methods Apple will use for Apple Pay may change it.”