Zuora, a cloud-based subscription management platform, has partnered with Amazon Pay to give customers the option to pay for subscriptions using their Amazon accounts.

The Seattle Times and The Telegraph are the first Zuora clients to integrate Amazon Pay into their subscription checkout experience, a feature announced at Zuora’s “Subscribed New York” event today.

“Subscriptions are The Telegraph’s top strategic priority,” stated Chris Taylor, Chief Information Officer, The Telegraph. “The convenience and reach of Amazon Pay has significantly reduced friction and increased speed of sign up for our subscribers.”

When readers go to subscribe for the publications online, they can sign into their Amazon accounts and pay with their saved credit cards. They can also use Amazon Pay for recurring payment processes.

“To us, a subscriber-centric business model means building a technology stack that supports our customers with a seamless experience to consume our content on any device,” stated Curtis Huber, senior director of circulation and audience revenue, The Seattle Times.

Since signing on with Zuora, The Seattle Times has improved retention rate by 30%, according to Huber. “With the ease of use of Amazon Pay, we expect to see retention rate increase even more,” he added.

The idea is the easier it is to subscribe, the more likely readers are to pay for a digital subscription.

This integration means Zuora is now a “Premier Partner” in the Amazon Pay Global Partner Program. Amazon and Zuora had a previous relationship: its Twitch division, a live streaming video platform, is a Zuora customer.

Zuora CEO Tien Tzuo described Amazon as a “poster child” for what he calls the “subscription economy,” a term Tzuo coined to describe a new era of business models that focus on relationships with customers rather than entirely on selling products.

“Amazon has a lot of credit cards,” Tzuo told Publishers Daily, referring to the number of saved credit card data it has as users signing up for recurring Amazon Prime memberships.

But now Amazon is taking on Apple Pay to let its customers use their accounts to pay for subscriptions beyond its own Prime offering.

This move also accelerates the newspapers’ shift to a subscription business model, a growing trend among publishers at a time when a huge chunk of advertising revenue is being grabbed by Facebook and Google.

As for Amazon, the partnerships give the tech company access to Zuora’s customer base of tens of millions of subscribers.

The integration with Amazon Pay is available in the EU, UK and US.