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The arrival of the age of fintech is about to shake up the financial services world as we know it.
Traditional powerhouses are already trying to figure out ways to co-exist with startups that are disrupting aging models. Look no further than the rise of mobile and digital banking and the declining relevance of brick-and-mortar banks, particularly among millennials, for evidence of that fact.
But it’s not just banks that are trying to conquer the fintech space.
Amazon is about to try its hand in this market, as the e-commerce giant’s head of payments, Patrick Gauthier, recently announced that the company is considering making some fintech acquisitions as valuations in the space start to decline and fintech becomes a more affordable investment.
This would be a logical progression for Amazon, which already has a significant and active user base. Amazon has been experiencing increased growth tied to payments, as its payments unit has 23 million active users and has recorded 200% year-over-year growth in merchants adding the "Pay with Amazon" buy button to their online stores.
There is also precedent for Amazon to make such a move. Chinese e-commerce giant Alipay has more than 450 million monthly active users and has more than 50% of the online payments market in China. So Amazon could be on the path to building up a similar type of momentum with its own customers.
Fintech acquisitions would also make Amazon more competitive with other checkout services such as Apple Pay and Visa Checkout. This could be crucial in the next few years, as BI Intelligence , Business Insider’s premium research service, forecasts that mobile commerce will make up 45% of all U.S. e-commerce retail sales by 2020.As […]