Payments FinTech Fiserv says it’s letting cardholders redeem points for Amazon purchases.
The offering, announced Thursday (July 27), allows cardholders at financial institutions that are part of Fiserv’s uChoose rewards program and enrolled in the Amazon Shop with Points program to redeem rewards points for all or part of their qualifying purchases at checkout.
“Consumers love choice, and Amazon provides it,” Rajeev Yerukalapudi, vice president of product management at Fiserv, said in a news release.
“The Amazon Shop with Points program gives cardholders another option to redeem their uChoose Rewards points for the things they really want, driving satisfaction and building loyalty while giving them the opportunity to reward themselves through their purchases, whether for daily essentials or special occasions.”
According to the release, the Amazon/Fiserv relationship lets consumers use uChoose Rewards points at checkout on Amazon.com and the Amazon mobile app. To take part, consumers need to link their eligible uChoose Rewards account on Amazon. From there, this payment option will be available during checkout.
“We’re always looking for ways to enhance convenience and value for customers,” said Tyler Aldrich, director of Amazon Payment Products. “Expanding our Shop with Points program to include uChoose Rewards from Fiserv will provide cardholders at these financial institutions even more value while shopping on Amazon.”
And consumers are seeking value, as data released Thursday by the U.S. Department of Commerce showed.
That data revealed that while consumer spending helped push gross domestic product (GDP) beyond expectations, growth in disposable income seems to be slowing as those consumers look to try to boost their savings and deal with the rising costs of debt obligations.
Personal savings reached $869.5 billion in the second quarter versus $840.9 billion in the first quarter. The personal saving rate — personal saving as a percentage of disposable personal income — was 4.4% in the second quarter, up from 4.3% in the first quarter.
“The read across, then, is that the slowing growth in spending in key categories such as apparel (and perhaps retail in general) is translating to a bit more in savings. The question remains as to how that will impact the holiday shopping season,” PYMNTS wrote.
And most consumers — 85% of all consumers PYMNTS surveyed — have been fine-tuning how and where they spend, whether it means reducing the quantity of their purchase, opting to go with lower-priced merchants or some combination of both.
News of the Fiserv/Amazon partnership comes one day after Fiserv released quarterly earnings showing that its point-of-sale solution Clover had logged 23% revenue growth in the quarter, where annualized GPV has risen 15% to $267 billion.