With Facebook announcing its new cryptocurrency called Libra it seems that we are entering a new era of great technology that enters into the main banks financial companies.
So, should we expect a significant Amazon movement on that front?
Perhaps a digital currency of its own or an impulse to compete with the big banks offering other types of financial products?
Not soon, said Patrick Gauthier, Amazon Pay vice president, who spoke at the inaugural Fortune Brainstorm Finance conference in Montauk, New York.
“At Amazon, we do not really deal with the speculative,” he said. Instead, the company allows the data, of which it has enough, to drive its decision on new products. “We always start from an identified need that we have the capacity to solve,” Gauthier added. Another requirement: the solution must have the ability to scale.
“The fact that we can build something does not mean we should”, he told the crowd.
Entering the financial field
When it comes to entering the financial field, the mega-retailer prefers to go the way of the association. “Amazon is a very pragmatic company,” said Gauthier. The key questions that the company asks itself are: “What do we have to build, who should we associate with?” He added.
As an example, Gauthier pointed out an association that the company recently launched with Synchrony, whose CEO, Margaret Keane, was also on the panel, with whom they launched the “Amazon Prime Store Card Credit Builder,” a new card that allows consumers with bad Credit or no credit give a refundable security deposit, which is used to set the total credit limit of the card. And by using the product, buyers have the ability to build credit and improve their score.
Keane says he believes that serving Amazon customers is “a big responsibility”. Such important alliances encourage the company to offer Amazon buyers the best possible experience, says Keane: “We have to comply”.