While the talks still aren’t aimed at Amazon becoming a bonafide bank, they are geared towards offering a financial product to younger customers who may not have access to a bank account, the paper reported citing people familiar with the matter. JPMorgan and CapitalOne are among the possible participants, the paper said.
7 shock-worthy facts about Amazon:
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7 shock-worthy facts about Amazon
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7 shock-worthy facts about Amazon
7.5 percent of Seattle's working-age population are Amazon employees
Amazon has more than 300,000 employees worldwide, and 40,000 in Seattle alone.
As a portion of the city's working-age population — roughly 528,000 — that comes out to 7.5% of the city working at Amazon.
For perspective, if the same portion of New York City's adults worked for one company, that company would have about 488,000 locals on staff.
Amazon accounts for 43% of all online sales
Amazon used to be a way to buy books online; today, it's the default buying site for just about everything, especially for people who have Amazon Prime.
An analysis by Slice Intelligence released in February found that 43% of all US online retail sales were done through Amazon in 2016.
That's up from 33% in 2015 and 25% in 2012.
1 out of every 4 US adults has Amazon Prime.
Speaking of Amazon Prime, the company now counts approximately 63 million people among its subscriber base, or about 25% of the total US adult population.
That number may underestimate the true coverage, however, since it doesn't account for multiple adults in one household all sharing the same Prime account.
Amazon ships 1.6 million packages a day
Amazon fulfillment is a beast of its own.
A report from 2013 (the latest year for which data are available) found Amazon shipped 608 million packages that year, or 1.6 million packages a day.
As of 2015, Amazon estimated its fulfillment centers were within 20 miles of 31% of the US population, and within 20 miles of 50-65% of its core, same-day-accessible market.
That's enough cardboard to span all of West Virginia
A back-of-the-envelope calculation reveals all those packages (not including padded envelopes) yield roughly 26,400 square miles of cardboard.
The total land area of West Virginia, meanwhile, is just north of 24,000 square miles.
Given the speed of Amazon's shipments, the company could blanket the whole US in cardboard in about five months.
45,000 robots roam the floors of Amazon's warehouses
To help those shipments leave the warehouses on time, Amazon relies on a growing fleet of autonomous robots that fetch packages from their shelves and bring them to human employees.
The 45,000 robots live across 20 fulfillment centers in the US. In 2016, the company increased the fleet 50% from its prior head count of 30,000.
Amazon is more valuable than all major brick-and-mortar retailers combined
The sum total of those investments in infrastructure and supply chain management have made Amazon by far the most valuable retailer in the United States.
Amazon's $356 billion valuation is so big, it's larger than Wal-Mart, Target, Best Buy, Macy's, Kohl's, JCPenney, and Sears combined.
Banks are also eager to partner with startup financial products, which often offer all the services of a bank without a traditional account. A large consortium of consumer banks recently banded together on money-transfer app Zelle in a move to fight off the likes of Venmo.
Amazon already offers a rewards credit card through Visa.
Shares of Amazon were up 0.2% ahead of the opening bell; JPMorgan was down 0.5%
