What to know about Prime Reload, Amazon’s latest rewards program

Amazon introduced Prime Reload Tuesday, which rewards 2 percent of purchases back to Prime members who fund their Amazon balances with their debit cards.
Forget the rumors about Amazon potentially buying a bank. Amazon practically is a bank. To date it has a foot in payments, cash, small business lending, consumer credit and now it’s coming for debit card users.
It’s not necessarily positioning itself to replace the existing banks, said Brendan Miller, principal analyst at Forrester Research; it’s just another way for people to interact with their money at a time when consumers funds are becoming more and more dispersed. Too bad for banks, that means they’ll naturally be taking fewer and fewer deposits and eventually, engage less and less with their customers, who will be engaging more with service providers like Amazon.
“There was already a trend of bank card spend being consolidated inside apps and services, and we are seeing the downstream risk to banks who are aware of this trend but aren’t do anything to act on it,” said Cherian Abraham, senior business consultant at Experian.
More in Marketing

Women’s sports marketing boom ‘huge up and coming opportunity,’ spurs new agency services
Women’s sports are having a moment. Brands, media companies and agencies are looking to get in on the action.

Creators still turning down work as the Hollywood SAG-AFTRA strike continues
The Hollywood strikes were supposed to be a game changer for many of them, but the situation hasn’t quite lived up to the hype.

Agencies move on from creating content for specific platforms to focus on short-form video
Given the rise of short-form video, agencies that focus on the format, rather than specific platform expertise, will reap the rewards.