Amazon Cash Comes To 7-Eleven

Cash and convenience, or a duality of the two, comes to 7-Eleven.

TechCrunch reported the news on Monday (Nov. 6) that Amazon Cash – which lets consumers top off their Amazon.com balances with cash at retailers – has debuted at 8,000 7-Eleven locations. The company has 10,900 stores in North America.

The addition of 7-Eleven broadens the reach of Amazon Cash, which launched in April and had previously been available at CVS, GameStop and several supermarket chains.

To use the Amazon Cash function, consumers present barcodes that are tied to their Amazon applications at the cash register. The cashier scans that code and adds funds to the Amazon account ranging from $15 to $500, sans fees.

TechCrunch noted that Amazon has been working with the convenience store chain by offering lockers for package deliveries. Those lockers are available across 300 U.S. cities.

“7-Eleven has long been an advocate for giving customers many options on how to pay for products and services,” said Tony Stapleton, 7-Eleven senior product director, in a statement. “7-Eleven constantly updates and introduces new forms of payments to respond to continued shifts in customer preferences, lifestyles and adoption of new technologies.”

The site noted that the Amazon Cash outreach seeks to boost cash access to the unbanked and underbanked populations of the United States and beyond. As cited by TechCrunch, the FDIC has estimated that cash-wielding consumers comprise about 27 percent of shoppers, and are likely to want to buy in-store, given their use of credit or debit cards at the register or checkout locales.