Apart from the May 1997 IPO, when Amazon raised $54 million in equity, the company had not turned to the equity markets to fund its growth. Instead, Amazon had occasionally raised debt (in 1999, 2002, 2012, and 2017), but the majority of its expansion had been funded from operating cash flows. Indeed, Amazon’s cash flows were sufficiently strong to allow it to provide loans to some of its suppliers and offer significant rewards through various consumer credit offerings.
In March 2015, Amazon introduced the Prime Store Card. The card, which was administered through Synchrony Financial, was available to Prime members with no annual fee and offered 5% cash back for all purchases on Amazon.com.154 It could only be used on Amazon.com. In January 2017, Amazon launched the Prime Rewards Visa Card in partnership with JPMorgan Chase & Co. Like the Prime Store Card, this card came with no annual fee and offered 5% cash back on Amazon.com purchases, but it could also be used elsewhere for 1-2% cash back.155 Consumer Intelligence Research Partners reported that owners of Amazon credit cards spent on average 16% more on the site than Prime members without a card.156 More recently, in June 2019, Amazon partnered again with Synchrony Financial to launch the Amazon Credit Builder program, which offered similar perks as its other cards – though with lower credit limits – to consumers with little or poor credit history.
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