American Express Partners with Amazon on SMB Credit Card

American Express announced plans this week to partner with Amazon to introduce a co-branded Amazon credit card for small businesses. Amazon does have a co-branded card with J.P. Morgan Chase for consumers shopping on Amazon’s site, and elsewhere. But this would be Amazon’s first card for small business owners.

“At American Express, we have been helping business owners grow for more than 50 years and we know that millions of them rely on Amazon,” said Glenda McNeal, President of Enterprise Strategic Partnerships at American Express in a statement. “We’re delighted to expand our partnership with Amazon by offering a new cobranded small business card, and by also harnessing the collective insights and expertise of our companies to deliver tangible value to our mutual customers who use Amazon’s services.”

This was quite a win for American Express as J.P. Morgan was competing for this partnership as well, according to CNBC. This deal puts American Express in an enviable position to court more small business customers in its effort to become a leading lender to small and mid-sized companies. Small business cards can be very lucrative for banks. Compared to consumers who might spend a few thousand dollars a month on credit cards, businesses can spend up to hundreds of thousands of dollars in monthly bills, according to CNBC.

“We selected American Express as our partner for the upcoming small business credit card because of our shared commitment to helping small businesses grow,” said Max Bardon, Vice President at Amazon in a statement. “Offering the best of both brands, the cobranded small business credit card program will combine the buying power, convenience and value small businesses have come to know and love from Amazon backed by the world-class service, benefits, access and security of American Express.”

Amazon launched Amazon Lending in 2011 to help small businesses finance and sell more goods on its platform. From the 2011 launch to June 2017, Amazon Lending reported that it issued $3 billion across 20,000 business in the US, Japan, and the UK. And the bulk of the growth has been from small businesses in the US, where the company originated $1 billion in loans in 2017 alone. So small business lending, particularly in the US, is big business for Amazon.

This new co-branded Amazon/American Express card for small businesses is part of a series of new partnerships between the e-commerce behemoth and banks.  In February of this year, it was reported that Amazon had partnered with Bank of America Merrill Lynch to provide loans to merchants (on an invitation-only basis) from $1,000 to $750,000.

Todd Stone was a reporter for deBanked.