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Amazon and JPMorgan are in the exploratory stage of a deal that could enable the e-commerce behemoth to offer checking accounts to its customers. The deal could be complicated by the FDIC and Dodd-Frank provisions that cap interchange fees paid to retailers for debit card purchases.
But if Amazon succeeds in offering users access to some kind of bank account, it would mark another move in its steady incursion in to territory historically dominated by the big brick-and-mortar lenders. Amazon has already pushed into loans to small businesses operating on its Marketplace platform, announcing last June that it had originated a total of $3bn since a low-key launch in 2011. Both Amazon and JPMorgan declined to comment on a possible tie-up. “Amazon is one example of a big tech company . . . thinking about finance as not just a feature to help drive the purchase of goods on their retail platform, but perhaps . . . as a core business,” said David Klein, chief executive of CommonBond, an online lending platform based in New York.
https://www.ft.com/content/6f89263c-209a-11e8-a895-1ba1f72c2c11
