Operations
23 January
Amazon, Stripe deepen partnership
Stripe will be used to process more Amazon payments, and become a bigger user of AWS.
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There’s a bigger chance that a payment to Amazon will be processed using Stripe as a result of a new agreement.
The news: Amazon and Stripe are expanding a long-standing partnership. This will grow the use of Stripe’s payments procession technology for Amazon products and services. The companies called it a “new chapter” for a relationship that began more than a decade ago, and a partnership that started when Amazon used Stripe to support shopping holiday purchases on Prime Day and Black Friday in 2017.
What’s Stripe? While Amazon is well-known in ecommerce, Stripe is also an important player, even if its name doesn’t show up on purchases. The company’s software and APIs help businesses process payments in a variety of different ways, including individual purchases at online and offline retailers, subscriptions and marketplaces. It also provides a host of tools around payments, from invoices to financing. It's one of the companies at the infrastructure layer of modern commerce, with technology used in purchases from many brands and retailers.
What’s in the agreement? The companies will grow their work together in the following ways:
Stripe will become the strategic payments partner for Amazon in the U.S., Europe and Canada. The fintech company will process “a significant portion" of the payments for purchases made on Amazon Prime, Audible, Kindle, Amazon Pay, Buy With Prime and more.
“Stripe has been a trusted partner, helping accelerate our business at every turn,” said Max Bardon, VP of payments at Amazon. “In particular, we value Stripe’s reliability. Even during peak days like Prime Day, Black Friday, and Cyber Monday, Stripe delivers industry-leading uptime. We appreciate Stripe’s relentless commitment to putting users first.”
Amazon Web Services, which is Amazon’s cloud division, will get more use from Stripe. This will allow the company to access AWS tools such as Graviton for data processing, and Nitro enclaves for data security.
“We couldn’t run without AWS—and we wouldn’t want to,” said David Singleton, chief technology officer of Stripe. “AWS is our customers’ first choice. The platform gives Stripe enormous developer leverage, which we then deploy in service of our users.”
What it means for ecommerce
Giants work together: The partnership brings together two of the tech companies that virtually run the internet economy. It signals the importance of payments infrastructure at a time when an expanding number of options for consumers and increasing competition among ecommerce marketplaces is making the transactional environment more complex.
Both had layoffs: The companies are also both among the wave of tech firms to recently make layoffs. Amazon started a round of job cuts that will eventually affect 18,000 roles last week. In December, Stripe laid off 14% of its workforce, or 1,100 employees. Both companies referenced overhiring during the pandemic as compared to economic realities that followed reopening and the economic pullback. Is partnership one way of doing more with fewer people?
AWS boost: Amazon Web Services (AWS) is a cloud leader, and a profit juggernaut for Amazon. Expanding work with a well-known technology company such as Stripe allows it to demonstrate how it partners and even grows with leading internet companies. This partnership also ties together AWS with Amazon’s commerce business. While the companies are under one roof, the connection is rarely as obvious as it is here.
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Retail Media
23 May
Save Mart launches digital ad network to drive in-store shopping
The California-based grocer is expanding its retail media partnership with Swiftly.
(Photo courtesy of Swiftly/Save Mart)
Retail media is growing at a breakneck pace and it’s at the top of commerce conversations in 2023. But it’s worth taking a step back to remembering that marketplace-based advertising remains in early stages of development. That means there is room for a variety of retailers to adopt it, and apply a diverse range of approaches to find what success looks like for their particular business.
The latest example comes in the form of news out Tuesday from The Save Mart Companies (TSMC) and Swiftly.
TSMC, a grocer that operates approximately 200 stores under the Save Mart, Lucky and FoodMaxx banners in California and Western Nevada, is launching a retail media network through the retailer’s websites and mobile apps that aims to drive in-store traffic and sales. The new offering expands TSMC’s partnership with Swiftly, a digital customer engagement company that helps brick-and-mortar retailers grow digital relationships with shoppers.
TSMC’s retail media network is taking an approach that is distinct from the advertising offerings of ecommerce platforms such as Amazon, Walmart and Instacart. Rather than search-based advertising in which brands purchase media to improve their ranking in results, TSMC and Swiftly are offering content, coupons and loyalty experiences alongside display advertising and product listings.
One part of the impetus for the focus on in-store shopping comes by way of category imperatives. About 80-90% of grocery transactions still take place in stores, and that’s especially true for regional-level grocers. Additionally, consumers are moving more seamlessly across digital and physical shopping. According to Swiftly data, over 85% of consumers prefer interacting with brands using both channels, so brands will want to show on apps just like they do in the store.
But it’s clear that they’re also thinking about injecting new ideas into the market. Swiftly CTO Sean Turner said the companies believe they can “out-innovate” competitors.
“There is a lot of opportunity to democratize the industry by bringing a lot of the capabilities that the larger players have, and enabling those in the rest of the industry,” said Sean Turner, CTO of Swiftly. “Save Mart is a very forward thinking grocer…and we've partnered together to look to leapfrog what its very formidable competitors are doing in digital.”
Turner offered a few examples of early campaigns being run on TSMC’s sites through the retail medai network:
Chobani has an activation that includes recipes that highlight how yogurt fits into full breakfast meals.
Freebie Friday offers a digital coupon to Save Mart items that offers redemption of a full-sized item available in the store.
Quaker Grits is featuring content on grits for California shoppers who may not be as familiar with a food that’s popular in the South and Midwest. This includes storytelling, pricing and availability.
Foster Farms’ Honey Crunchy Mini Corndogs is featuring a $2-off coupon in the frozen section. When users click into the coupon, they can also see other products available in the store to which the coupon can be applied.
The variety of available media speaks to how shoppers are using digital properties at a grocer such as Save Mart. The company’s websites and mobile apps don’t offer an ecommerce marketplace. Rather, digital is complementary to the in-store shopping experience. So shoppers are interacting with the content in a number of different ways. Rather than pointing to online checkout, everything must orient back to the store.
“They might open up the retailer's weekly ad, they might go to see what coupons are available, they might look at what items are on sale, and we leverage the digital properties to help to tell that story," Turner said. “And that's really where a lot of this brand storytelling can come in. Shoppers are able to leverage some of the great stories, both around savings as well as around new product ideas, to educate shoppers, and offer a better service to shoppers when they come into the store.”
Like most of retail media, part of the advantage lies in targeting capabilities. Advertising through these owned web and app experiences is powered by first-party data. That’s different from the third-party data that for years powered cookies and social media-based advertising. It’s an area where grocers can gain a particular advantage. Their stores are the site of regular purchases, and as a result they have the potential to access lots of data about consumer habits.
“I can't think of a vertical where you've got a richer first party data set, and more choice in terms of just the number of SKUs and brands that you have in your average grocery store, Turner said. “That's ripe for this kind of advancement.”
For regional grocers that have long operated on tight margins, there’s another significant opportunity in retail media: Adding a high-margin digital business that scales quickly. Now, the local supermarket is an internet-based business, too.
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