Amazon promotes payment offerings to capitalize on Cyber 5 sales

The news: Amazon’s Cyber Weekend event—spanning from Saturday, November 26 through Monday, November 28—will not only include a wide variety of deals and discounts, but also a slew of payment promotions, per a press release.

More on this: In the week leading up to Cyber Monday, Amazon announced offers on its cards and BNPL offerings, hoping they will promote spending on the platform.

• Amazon Store Card. Customers who are approved for the Amazon Store Card this week will get a $100 Amazon gift card as a signup bonus. The bonus incentivizes card signup and ensures the $100 reward is spent in-house.
• Amazon Prime Rewards Visa Card. During the same period, Prime members will get a $200 Amazon gift card if they are approved for the Amazon Prime Rewards Visa Card, encouraging the etailer’s already loyal customers to start transacting with its card.
• Prime Card Bonus. Amazon is also offering any Prime member who is a cardholder an extra 10% back this week on purchases from The Drop, Amazon’s influencer collection. This can boost customer loyalty and can encourage spend on one of Amazon’s in-house brands.
• Affirm. This week, Amazon customers can get 0% APR on three equal monthly payments when spending $50 or more. Typically Affirm’s rates range between 10% to 30% APR on purchases for a term of six to 48 months. This 0% offer will likely draw consumers who are turning to alternative financing during this holiday season due to inflation.

Why it’s worth watching: US retail ecommerce sales during Cyber 5 are expected to hit $37.32 billion this year, up from $36.15 billion in sales in 2021, per our forecasts. And Cyber Monday is expected to make up the biggest share of the long weekend’s transactions this year, with $11.84 billion in expected sales.

Sales events this weekend are therefore vital to etailers like Amazon that rely heavily on holiday spend: Amazon’s total retail holiday ecommerce sales are projected to reach $100.01 billion this year, up 17.0% from last year.

• Offering promotions on its card and BNPL offerings can help Amazon achieve this growth, especially since many customers are extra-aware of their holiday budgets this year: 57% of consumers plan to create a holiday-specific budget this year as a result of inflation and rising prices, according to a survey from TD Bank.
• These promotions on Amazon’s in-house payment offerings set up the company to capture higher payments volume and transaction revenues.

This article originally appeared in Insider Intelligence's Payments Innovation Briefing—a daily recap of top stories reshaping the payments industry. Subscribe to have more hard-hitting takeaways delivered to your inbox daily.

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