Amazon to ‘Significantly Expand’ Use of Stripe

Amazon plans to “significantly expand” its use of payments platform Stripe.

“Under the new agreement, Stripe will become a strategic payments partner for Amazon in the U.S., Europe and Canada, processing a significant portion of Amazon’s total payments volume,” Stripe said in a Monday (Jan. 23) news release. “Stripe will be used across Amazon’s business units, including Prime, Audible, Kindle, Amazon Pay, Buy With Prime and more.”

The companies have worked together since 2017 when Amazon tapped Stripe to speed its market expansion in Europe and Asia and to support purchases during heavy shopping days such as Black Friday and its own Prime Day, the release said.

The partnership will also see Stripe expand its use of Amazon Web Services (AWS) for “compute infrastructure” to help it serve its business clients, according to the release.

“We couldn’t run without AWS—and we wouldn’t want to,” said Stripe Chief Technology Officer David Singleton in the release. “AWS is our customers’ first choice.”

The expanded partnership is happening as Amazon is cutting more than 18,000 jobs, fallout from what CEO Andy Jassy has called an “uncertain” economy.

This uncertainty — and a slump in sales — has led many retailers to look for innovations that can lead to greater speed and convenience.

As Jassy told employees in a memo on the company layoffs, “we sometimes overlook the importance of the critical invention, problem-solving, and simplification that go into figuring out what matters most to customers (and the business), adjusting where we spend our resources and time, and finding a way to do more for customers at a lower cost (passing on savings to customers in the process). Both of these types of Invent and Simplify really matter.”

Consumers are demanding a smoother eCommerce checkout experience, leading to innovations that focus on removing friction and improving product information and security. It’s a topic explored in “Building a Better Online Checkout Experience: The Key Features That Matter to Customers,” a PYMNTS and Checkout.com collaboration.

That study found that close to 75% of consumers used their preferred purchase method in their latest online checkout. And majorities of these consumers pointed to using seven other features, including easy order confirmation (70%) and secure account data storage (70%).

Stripe has had some struggles of its own lately. Earlier this month, the company reportedly slashed its internal valuation by 11%, the third reduction since last year and part of a wave of tech firms lowering their valuations as investor sentiment cools.

And like Amazon, Stripe has had to cut staff, announcing a 14% layoff last year as a result of what it said was overhiring.

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