<< Read Part 1: FAANGs In Finance: Joining The Customer Journey 

This spring, at TechCrunch Disrupt Asia, a leading VC called Amazon the next biggest FinTech company. In this post, we explore the opportunities for Amazon to enter Financial Services – and how today’s Financial Institutions can leverage the Amazon platform to engage tomorrow’s investors.

The Chinese Parallel

Our “Amazon Wealth” prediction isn’t pure speculation – the company’s Chinese e-commerce counterparts have already become financial titans by embedding payments, loans, and investments into their consumer platforms. Alibaba, a $391BN market cap global competitor with Amazon, spun out one of the most successful fintech companies, Ant Financial.

Ant, the creator of Alipay, acquired MoneyGram for over $1BN in cash and entered the Spanish payments market through a partnership with Santander. Ant’s “leftover change” product, Yu’e Bao, took in over $165BN in under 4 years, becoming the largest money market fund in the world. It yields 3.93% on consumers’ spare change, a significant increase on traditional Chinese banks’ funds.

Amazon is as ambitious as Alibaba, from books to food, music to movies, AI & AWS, and most recently, messaging.  Last year, Amazon filed over 566 patents; this year, it has averaged 32/month so far. The top categories were computing and electronic communication, while their most active Trademark filings are 97 for advertising and 88 for scientific. A bit more digging yields filings for Trademarks on things like “Amazon Coin” which could be a Bitcoin-like cryptocurrency or an internal payment system. Amazon’s wide-ranging patent portfolio indicates they are eyeing multiple opportunities in finance.

How would “Amazon Finance” play out? We see a few paths:

Mirror Alibaba:

Amazon could accelerate their move into finance by gobbling up PayPal or Square. A PayPal acquisition would give Amazon social media assets in Venmo and a strong footprint in global payment systems. PayPal’s origins as a P2P payment system aligns with Amazon’s platform and position as an e-commerce marketplace. Paypal has also remained relatively nimble by avoiding the most cumbersome regulations that slow down other financial institutions, making the company an attractive acquisition target, given Amazon’s culture of “trimming the fat” to maximize efficiency.

Platform Play:

Growth in Amazon’s non-core business lines is often overlooked, but their Trademark filings convey continued ambition across verticals. Amazon could easily become a marketplace platform for a range of financial services from investment accounts to credit cards.  Amazon could build the systems for financial firms to open accounts, enable customers to manage the accounts and interact on Amazon. Over 70% of digital natives would trust Amazon more than a bank site, so why not bring them into the Amazon Tent? This would allow financial firms to leverage the Amazon platform to engage customers, without the regulatory hassle. The “Platform” angle would give Amazon the “kingmaker” role with Financial Service firms.  The “Platform” play gives them another service to put onto their new messaging service “Anytime,” following in the footsteps of Alibaba’s chief rival WeChat.

Alt Currency:

An already trademarked ‘Amazon Coin,’ the name of which currently only used for game and app purchases, could be a bold yet logical entrant to the booming Cryptocurrency market. Amazon already does $135BN in annual revenue. Combined with their ability to leverage their reputation for security, Amazon is a natural market maker, the middleman for vendors, suppliers, sellers, and customers. Increasingly positioned as a central pass-through for all things commerce, Amazon launching its own cryptocurrency would keep customers sticky to their platform and boost their bottom line.

Amazon has trodden lightly thus far with its financial services offering, but we don’t expect their idleness to last for much longer. While we present Mirror, Platform, and Alt Currency as 3 potential paths, there are certainly many more paths that Amazon could take.  What do YOU think Amazon’s next move will be? Send us your thoughts.