May 5, 2025, 12:05 pm | Read time: 3 minutes
Amazon has been around for 30 years, and few people have likely seen more orders than founder Jeff Bezos. However, an early delivery from Bulgaria has particularly stuck in his memory and still makes him smile 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 early months after launching the online business, a particularly curious 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 this story in 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 not available in Germany until October 15, 1998. Founder Jeff Bezos was all the more surprised when, just a few months after the platform’s launch, an order from Bulgaria arrived. A country where Amazon is still not available today. In his lecture to MIT students, Bezos even mentioned that he didn’t know at the time that Bulgaria had internet access at all.
The young company accepted the order nonetheless. As if that wasn’t extraordinary enough, the most curious part of the story was yet to come.
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The customers did not want to pay with a credit card, which was already the standard payment method in the U.S. and for online purchases. One reason might simply be that they didn’t own a credit card. While these were standard in the U.S., they were hardly in circulation in Europe. According to Bezos, the Bulgarians paid in cash. They reportedly withdrew two brand-new $100 bills from the bank. But instead of simply mailing them, they came up with something special. Fearing the money might be stolen, they folded the bills tightly and hid them inside 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 read in English: “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.
To ensure the order could be identified upon arrival at Amazon, the clever Bulgarians included the order number, allowing Amazon to ship the books.