Amazon renews Prime credit card tie-up with JPMorgan Chase after flirting with American Express
Amazon has chosen to renew a deal allowing JPMorgan Chase to issue the tech giant's flagship rewards credit card, ending months of heated negotiations, CNBC has learned.
The Amazon Prime Rewards card was one of the industry's most highly coveted co-brand deals, a rare prize because of the massive scope of Amazon's loyalty program, with its estimated 150 million U.S. members, according to people with knowledge of the talks.
While JPMorgan has issued Amazon's card since it was little more than an online bookseller two decades ago, that didn't stop Amazon from soliciting bids to replace the bank in mid-2021. American Express, Synchrony and Citigroup were among the issuers involved in discussions, and Mastercard had hoped to displace Visa as payments network, said the people, who declined to be identified speaking about the private process.
«This was a once-in-a lifetime opportunity to penetrate Amazon and have a step change in your card business,» said one of the people. «If Chase were to lose it, it would be the shot heard around the payments world. Any winner would gain instant credibility and a new growth story for Wall Street.»
Credit card deals with popular brands including Amazon, Costco and American Airlines have become some of the most hotly contested contracts in the financial world. That's because they instantly give the issuing bank a captive audience of millions of loyal customers who spend billions of dollars a year. The biggest pacts can make up a disproportionate share of an issuer's business; American Express lost 10% of its cards in circulation when Citigroup won the bid for Costco's card in 2015.
The card deals are so important to banks that CEOs including JPMorgan's Jamie Dimon and Citigroup's Jane
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