Amazon looking to tie-up with more banks for credit card offerings

Global e-commerce giant Amazon is looking to tie-up with more banks for credit card offerings, as it sees high growth in the segment, a senior official said on Wednesday.

At present, the company has a tie-up with ICICI Bank for a co-branded credit card as part of which over 42 lakh credit cards have been issued as of June 2023.

"… as we think about expanding our credit offerings, we will absolutely look at whether we want to tie-up with more banks and also want to expand to more networks and (that is) something we are deliberating right now," Amazon Pay's whole-time director Vikas Bansal told reporters here.

He said the bank looks at "trends and customer problems" on a continuous basis, and also added that there is a "strong interest" among small businesses to own a credit card.

ICICI Bank had reported a 45 per cent jump in its credit card portfolio for the June quarter, and attributed the high growth to higher activation rate through digital onboarding of customers, including Amazon Pay credit cards.

Bansal said there is a high interest among the platform's customers to make purchases using credit offerings, including the credit card offerings with ICICI Bank, a pay later offering and also instalments where it has partnered with other lenders.

He said 50 per cent of the sales in Maharashtra are happening by using some of the credit avenues, and added that the pay later user base has also grown by 50 per cent in 2023, when compared with last year.

Bansal did not immediately share the experiences on a countrywide level on the usage of credit for making e-commerce purchases. He also declined comment when asked about the national financial savings rate declining to an over four-decade low and how the company looks at the data.

The company said 80 per cent of the Amazon Pay ICICI Credit Card holders in Maharashtra have used the card at least once in 2023, and also revealed findings of a survey showing upbeat sentiment ahead of festivities.

The survey said over 80 per cent of the respondents have a positive intent to shop during this year's festive sales and over half of them said they will increase their spending this year, Bansal said.

Bansal said the company has tied up with country's largest lender SBI for this year's sale, but declined to share any targets or expectations from the sale.