Amazon isn’t the only retailer encroaching on the financial services space. It may be the scariest — just the rumor of it entering a company’s space will send its stock price down — but ultimately, Amazon only cares about getting more buyers and more sellers to join its platform.
Overstock’s Raj Karkara, vp of loyalty and financial services, echoed that sentiment earlier this year, saying that offering financial services or connecting customers with financial services providers is a natural extension of its retail function of buying and selling consumer goods.
“Our goal is to bring products to market faster,” Karkara said. “We want to expand the customer relationship as much and as fast as we can.”
It’s obvious that banks need to borrow from retailers when creating customer experiences whether it’s in the branch, the mobile app or even the payments. But while retailers are already ahead on digital experiences, many from CVS to 7-Eleven to some of the largest e-commerce platforms in the world are also borrowing from banks to improve their own customer relationships.
Here are three major retail companies beyond Amazon or Alibaba that are growing their financial services offerings.
