AWS signup asks for credit card but I want to use consolidated billing

Question

I have a master AWS account which will be the main billing account, and client accounts will feed their bills into it via consolidated billing. I am now setting up a new client account but it has asked me for a credit card. If for any reason my client wants to take their business elsewhere I want to be able to hand them the root user details, stop consolidated billing from the master account and say goodbye, so I DON'T want my credit card hanging around on their account. Is there a way to side-step this stage of the sign up and just link the account direct to my master account? Thanks.

Come to think of it, there must be a more robust way of paying for AWS than on a credit card? I can't imagine a bunch of production-critical infrastructure being paid for my some bloke's credit card?! Surely there is a proper corporate account structure available?

Answer 1

Ok, so I may have answered my own question. It appears that if I just fill out the credit card info on sign up of the sub-account, then link it to the master account, then log in to amazon.com with the same AWS root account details (yeah the 'books and retail side of the business', weird huh!) I can remove the credit card from amazon.com which will then remove it in the AWS root account billing section.

I gotta say, this is a very odd behaviour to have to sign up to Amazon-the-retailer which also stores a copy of your corporate credit card details.

I think Amazon needs to more radically divorce the two businesses. There is absolutely no way I would use my corporate credit card to go shopping on Amazon. Crazy.

My question about there being a more robust way to do business with AWS vis-a-vis payment choices other than some dude's credit card still stands, so anyone know if this is possible? Can't imagine the CEO of Netflix having to pay for all his gazillion servers with his Amex card...