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Amazon Cash, a service that lets customers instantly add money to their Amazon.com accounts at brick-and-mortar retail locations, is now available at approximately 8,000 7-Eleven locations, technology blog TechCrunch reports.
The service launched in April 2017 “as a way to better serve the underbanked and un-banked U.S. customer base,” TechCrunch states. Previously, the service was available exclusively at select CVS, Speedway and GameStop locations as well as at a few supermarkets and convenience stores across the country.
“7-Eleven has long been an advocate for giving customers many options on how to pay for products and services,” Tony Stapleton, 7-Eleven senior product director, says in a press release. “7-Eleven constantly updates and introduces new forms of payments to respond to continued shifts in customer preferences, lifestyles and adoption of new technologies.”
To activate the service, customers can visit the Amazon Cash website and receive a bar code that enables 7-Eleven employees to link their cash deposits with their Amazon accounts. Shoppers can add $15 to $500 to their accounts in a single transaction.
The service aims to reach “the cash customer,” TechCrunch reports. According to a 2015 Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. (FDIC) report, this demographic accounts for nearly 34 million households in the U.S. Retail giant Walmart has also tried to reach this cohort by offering a program that enables customers to purchase items online, but pay with cash at any Walmart location.
Partnership between Amazon and 7-Eleven goes back as far as five years, when 7-Eleven locations in Seattle and New York first installed Amazon Lockers for expedited package deliveries.
