Amazon, JPMorgan Team Up to Introduce Branded Checking ‎Accounts

E-commerce giant Amazon.com is reportedly in early talks to team up with ‎JPMorgan Chase and other U.S. banks in a bid to launch its own checking-‎account-like product. Amazon hopes that the new initiative will appeal particularly to ‎millennials and customers without bank accounts, The Wall Street Journal ‎reports.‎

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Interestingly, the idea of a new checking account comes a few days after a survey showed that more than half of Amazon shoppers would embrace using an Amazon-created cryptocurrency on the site.

The new product, which is essentially adding banking to the roster of ‎services Amazon offers, is still early in development and may not come ‎to fruition. It’s also unknown what other banking features it will contain, ‎such as ATM access, as services included in the product are still to ‎be determined.‎

It was also unclear how extensively the Amazon-branded checking account ‎would overhaul its existing ecosystem which was recently ‎extended to the home security, delivery, and healthcare spaces.

The partnership is the third between Amazon, the ‎online retail giant known for disrupting major ‎industries, and JPMorgan Chase, the largest ‎bank in the United States by assets.‎ These corporations are closely ‎watched as whatever successes they have ‎could become models for other businesses.‎

If Amazon were to launch its checking account version, the firm would be working only as a partner ‎with existing financial institutions and “whatever its final form, the initiative wouldn’t involve Amazon ‎becoming a bank,” the Journal said.

The report noted that if the process took off it could help eliminate ‎fees Amazon pays to banks and payment processors. Furthermore, the move also gives the online retailer ‎access to additional customer data, which would help grow its ‎paid memberships and provide another incentive to stay ‎locked.

The alliance between Amazon and J.P. Morgan is also a sign of just ‎how e-shoppers are frustrated with the state of the current systems and the ‎rapidly spiraling cost of online Payments Payments One of the bases of mediums of exchange in the modern world, a payment constitutes the transfer of a legal currency or equivalent from one party in exchange for goods or services to another entity. The payments industry has become a fixture of modern commerce, though the players involved and means of exchange have dramatically shifted over time.In particular, a party making a payment is referred to as a payer, with the payee reflecting the individual or entity receiving the payment. Most commonl One of the bases of mediums of exchange in the modern world, a payment constitutes the transfer of a legal currency or equivalent from one party in exchange for goods or services to another entity. The payments industry has become a fixture of modern commerce, though the players involved and means of exchange have dramatically shifted over time.In particular, a party making a payment is referred to as a payer, with the payee reflecting the individual or entity receiving the payment. Most commonl Read this Term.

‎"The underlying goal is to further grow its Prime membership through cross-‎selling into existing J.P. Morgan customers and this could lead to more ‎initiatives down the road," Dan Ives, chief strategy officer at GBH Insights told CNBC. "Ultimately, ‎Amazon is in fifth gear, trying to double down on the consumer and the ‎finance vertical looks like the next step (through partnerships) of adding to ‎the Amazon flywheel,"‎ he added.