Amazon to Accept Cash for Online Purchases
Amazon introduces a new feature called Amazon Cash to allow shoppers to buy and pay for items from their site.
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This service will allow you to go to a local brick and mortar retailer and turn your cash into a credit on your Amazon account.
First you sign into your Amazon account and go to Amazon Cash and print out a bar code that identifies your account. If you have the Amazon app installed on your phone, you can also create the barcode that way.
The you show the cashier at one of the participating stores your barcode and they will scan it and deposit the cash for you into your account.
Daily limits do apply and may vary by store. In most cases you cannot deposit more than $500 per day.
AMAZON LAUNCH PARTNERS
At launch, Amazon has partnered with the following stores to accept cash for your Amazon account.
- CVS Pharmacy
- Speedway
- Sheets
- Kum & Go
- D&W Fresh Market
- Family Fare Supermarkets
- VG’s Grocery
Other stores will be added to the network soon, but the Speedway and CVS Pharmacy locations provide a good national footprint to start.
Best of all this is a free service for shoppers. You will not pay any additional fees to deposit cash into your Amazon account.
Until May 31, 2017, Amazon is also running a promotion where they will offer a $10 digital credit for every $50 deposited into your Amazon account.
The digital credit is valid for movies, music, book, games, apps, and software downloads.
WHY IS AMAZON DOING THIS?
As much as many Americans have switched over to using credit or debit cards for payments, there is a sizeable community of people that get paid in cash or have no bank account.
The FTC estimated in 2015 that nearly 27% of households were unbanked or underbanked. Most of theses households relied on cash for many purchases.
Amazon Cash attempts to capture this demographic segment and increase the Amazon shopping user base that has done little or no shopping on Amazon.
In some ways, Amazon Cash resembles a service by Paypal called Paypal My Cash Card. Another service designed to appeal to consumers who do not have or do not use bank accounts.
Of course by applying the cash to their Amazon account, Amazon locks the user into its offerings. With a Paypal My Cash Card a consumer can pick from many different online merchants.
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Richard Meldner
Richard is co-founder of eSeller365. He has over 17 years of experience on eBay which includes tens of thousands of sales to buyers in over 100 countries and even has experience with eBay’s VeRO program enforcing intellectual property rights for a former employer. And for about two years Richard sold products on Amazon using Amazon FBA in the US.
To “relax” from the daily business grind, for a few weekends a year, he also works for IMSA as a professional race official.