With the holiday season thrust upon us, Amazon.com is looking to get every single penny it can from already harried consumers who simply don’t use or don’t have credit or debit cards.
Amazon Cash, the service that lets consumers add cash to their Amazon.com balance at brick-and-mortar retailers, is now available at nearly 8,000 7-Eleven convenience stores. That’s a significant expansion for Amazon Cash, which was previously available at retailers like CVS, Cumberland Farms, Speedway and GameStop, along with a handful of other supermarket chains and convenience stores.
Amazon isn’t alone in trying to reach this demographic. Other companies do this as well, like PayPal with its My Cash Card, for example, or Walmart’s Pay with Cash option.
Though it may seem counterintuitive for retailers to try reaching the “cash only customer,” they’re still a sizable portion of the market. According to an FDIC report from 2015, this demographic accounts for 27 percent of consumers. And these customers may not be regularly shopping online due to the need to use credit or debit cards at checkout.
Buying from Amazon in the past, would have meant buying an Amazon Gift Card in a designated amount or adding cash to prepaid payment cards to be used at checkout.
Both Walmart and Amazon this year made it easier for customers on government assistance to shop their sites and use their services as well. Amazon even reduced the cost of its Prime membership to $5.99 a month for qualifying customers with an EBT card.
To use Amazon Cash at a 7-Eleven, customers present a personalized barcode located in their Amazon app to the cashier along with the cash money they want to load. The required barcode can also be sent via a text, or even printed out. The cashier scans the barcode, which immediately adds the funds to the customer’s account balance on Amazon.com. Customers are able to load up to $500 in a single transaction with no fees.
Amazon’s expansion of its cash service to 7-Eleven represents another partnership between the two retailers.7-Eleven has already been working with Amazon to offer Amazon Lockers for package delivery. The bright yellow lockers were first installed in stores in Seattle and Manhattan, and are now available in select stores in more than 300 cities. 7-Eleven also carries Amazon prepaid gift cards in denominations from $25 to $500 – presumably the “perfect” Christmas gift or stocking stuffer. Remember there’s only 47 days left till Christmas…..
