Amazon announced yesterday that “it will begin offering Venmo as a new payment option for orders placed on Amazon.com and the Amazon mobile app.” The option will become available by Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving that is the traditional beginning of the end-of-year holiday shopping season.
Venmo boasts that it has close to 90 million customers in its system.
According to the announcement, “Placing an order using Venmo is simple and hassle-free. To get started, customers will add their Venmo account as a payment method to their Amazon account. Once their account is added, customers can select Venmo as their payment option during checkout. Customers can also choose to select Venmo as their default payment option after adding their Venmo account.”
“We want to offer customers payment options that are convenient, easy to use, and secure—and there’s no better time for that than the busy holiday season. Whether it’s paying with cash, buying now and paying later, or now paying via Venmo, our goal is to meet the needs and preferences of every Amazon customer,” Max Bardon, vice president of Amazon Worldwide Payments, said in a prepared statement. “We’re excited to continue to offer customers even more options when it comes to how and when they want to pay for their order.”
Some context from CNN:
“Launched in 2009, Venmo has evolved from a peer-to-peer payment app that lets users pay back friends for last night’s pizza into a payment system accepted by major businesses, including CVS and Uber. The app … also offers a credit card and has entered into the crypto market by allowing users to buy and sell Bitcoin, Ethereum and other cryptocurrencies.”
KC’s View:
The TechCrunch coverage of the story. notes that there have bene studies saying that “Venmo users shop two times more frequently than an average shopper. So that might be beneficial for Amazon in terms of increasing the number of transactions on its platform.” I’m not sure what the overlap is with Amazon Prime membership, but I suspect it is significant … but, adding this level of convenience is a smart thing for both Venmo and Amazon. It is all about reducing friction.
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