Amazon Lending is to expand to the UK, Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Italy and Spain. Later this year according to Reuters, Amazon Lending will be offered to merchants on a case by case invitation only basis.
Amazon are well placed to assess sellers for short term capital loans, they better than any other marketplace or finance company not only know your turnover and selling history on Amazon, but also are able to generate reports showing exactly how often you go out of stock of top selling lines which possibly an injection of capital could solve.
Amazon first started offering short term credit to sellers in the US back in 2012. Of course they’re not the only company that you can turn to. Shortly to be separated from eBay, PayPal offer PayPal credit and there are a ton of other companies such as iwoca and ezbob who are able to offer finance based on your marketplace selling history.
One of the disadvantages of taking a loan from Amazon is that they’ll only take your Amazon sales history into account when assessing your suitability for a loan. Other companies can tot up your Amazon, eBay and Website history so may offer a larger amount. A big advantage for Amazon is of course that they can offer loans strategically when they see fast moving product lines stall for lack of inventory and whilst they’ll intend for the finance to grow your Amazon business it may also help finance inventory you can shift on other platforms too.
Would you take a loan from Amazon, or would you rather keep your finance arrangements separate from the marketplace you trade on?
5 Responses
Depends on the terms. Have no problem getting finance as such, whether its worth doing is in the details.
It’s already in the UK it popped up on our account yesterday.
Yet another way for Amazon to lock you in to their selling platform.
If it’s coming to the UK and the EU, is it also coming to Scotland?
All very good until Amazon suddenly decide to either start selling your products themselves whilst undercutting you on price, or decide to close your seller account for their numerous reasons. Then you not only can’t get any money coming in from them but you also owe them money which they will probably want paying back straight away.