July 22, 2026, 9:42 am | Read time: 3 minutes
Amazon has been around for 30 years–and few people have likely seen more orders than founder Jeff Bezos. Yet, an early delivery from Bulgaria has particularly stuck in his memory and still makes him chuckle today.
Jeff Bezos founded Amazon in 1994. He wanted to sell books through the platform, and by July 1995, the first order was shipped. In the first months after launching the online business, a highly unusual Amazon order and payment process occurred. Just a few months after starting, the young company received an order from Bulgaria–complete with an original cash payment that remains one of the quirkiest episodes in Amazon’s history. Bezos recounted it during a 2002 lecture at MIT.
Amazon Order from Bulgaria with Unusual Payment
In its first three years, the young book-selling platform Amazon operated exclusively in the United States. For example, amazon.de was only available in Germany starting October 15, 1998. So founder Jeff Bezos was quite surprised when an order from Bulgaria came in just a few months after the platform’s launch. A country where Amazon is still not available today. In his lecture to MIT students, Bezos even said he didn’t know at the time that Bulgaria had internet access at all.
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The young company accepted the order anyway. As if that wasn’t extraordinary enough, the quirkiest part of the story was yet to come.
Clever and Unique Payment Method!
The customers didn’t want to pay with a credit card–the already common payment method in the U.S. and for online purchases. One reason could simply be that they didn’t own a credit card. While these were already standard in the U.S., they were hardly in circulation in Europe. According to Bezos, the Bulgarians paid in cash. They reportedly got two brand-new $100 bills from the bank. But instead of just mailing them, they came up with something special. Fearing the money might be stolen, they folded the bills small and hid them in a floppy disk.
More precisely, the customers wedged their bills under the metal window latch. They packed the disk along with a note in the envelope. According to Jeff Bezos, the note in English read: “The money is in the disk. Customs officers steal money, but they don’t understand English.” Apparently, the buyers were quite afraid that the money for their order might get lost on the long postal journey from Bulgaria to the U.S.
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To ensure the order could be identified upon arrival at Amazon, the clever Bulgarians included the order number, allowing Amazon to ship the books.