The Prime Business Card and Amazon Business Card, announced Wednesday (May 13), are issued by U.S. Bank on the Mastercard network, with a focus on small business customers.
“U.S. Bank has spent decades building trusted relationships with America’s small business owners, and this partnership allows us to extend that commitment at unprecedented scale,” said Courtney Kelso, the bank’s senior executive vice president and head of payments, consumer and small business.
“We’re not just offering a credit card—we’re delivering a comprehensive financial toolkit that helps business owners manage cash flow, maximize rewards, and access the credit they need to seize opportunities when they arise,” Kelso added.
According to a news release, the card offers improved rewards on purchases made outside Amazon, as well as the ability to split eligible Amazon purchases into fixed monthly payments at 0% APR for up to 12 months, in lieu of earning rewards.
Research by PYMNTS Intelligence and Mastercard has shown that small- to medium-sized businesses (SMBs) often use their cards for cash flow rather than rewards.
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According to “Ready for Change: Why Nearly Half of SMBs Want to Ditch Cash and Checks,” 46% of these merchants would pay for the ability to adjust payment windows based on when funds are available. Forty-three percent said they would pay for installment capabilities, while 42.9% of SMBs would pay for longer payment windows.
“Flexibility over timing outweighs rewards programs,” PYMNTS wrote in March. “The data indicate that SMBs prioritize tools that allow them to manage outflows in alignment with receivables and revenue cycles.”
In related news, PYMNTS wrote Wednesday, the U.S. small business economy has ceased to evolve evenly.
“It is bifurcating. The pandemic accelerated digitization, and what followed was consolidation of advantage,” that report said.
On one side are digitally fluent SMBs, which invested in things like omnichannel commerce, digital payments, mobile ordering and operational software. These operations are growing faster, adapting more easily and demonstrating more confidence about expansion.
The other side are smaller businesses who still operate without much digital infrastructure, many of them struggling to turn “post-pandemic normalization into meaningful growth.”
This has shifted “the economics of small business competition, which today increasingly depends on owned websites, delivery aggregators, digital wallets, social commerce, platform discovery and more platform-driven operational efficiencies,” PYMNTS added.
