Amazon added another top tier card partner with their small business card, as Ad Age reports. In addition to Amazon’s Private Label Credit Card, offered by Synchrony, and Chase’s Amazon Rewards Visa Signature Card, your small business will soon be able to have an American Express-branded card to help run your business. As far as I know, no other retailer has covered the market with a full set of top-tier co-branded and PLCC providers.
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Amazon will also provide line-item detail on transactions AmEx corporate and purchasing-card customers make on the retailer’s website, giving shoppers more data to control their business purchases, New York-based AmEx said Tuesday in a statement.
The partnership is exciting for several reasons. It indicates that Amazon, the US leader in online retail, will remain focused on the native market rather than trying to enter the world of payments. With their choice of partnerships, Amex, Chase, and Synchrony, they have lenders who know the payment space well and have the capacity to handle the transaction throughput. And for American Express, it illustrates that the company has every intention of being a viable force in the co-branded industry and is prepared to faceoff with any player.
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AmEx has been spending more to ink card deals after parting ways in 2016 with Costco Wholesale Corp., which was its largest co-brand partner at the time. Last year, AmEx won dual-issuing rights with JPMorgan Chase & Co. for Marriott International Inc.’s suite of cards and the exclusive ability to issue credit cards for Hilton Worldwide Holdings Inc.
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AmEx has said renewing those two deals will crimp earnings by more than $200 million this year.
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“The new Amazon co-brand card speaks positively about AXP’s competitive positioning within the market, particularly in the small business space, as evidenced by the company being able to win it from large bank issuer competitors,”
This card will be branded American Express and aimed at Small Business Credit Cards, which we cover in this document. If you want more info on Private Label Credit Card, see here.
But, for now, kudos for American Express, who is aggressively hitting the market in 2018!
Overview by Brian Riley, Director, Credit Advisory Service at Mercator Advisory Group