- Key insights: U.S. Bank is taking over the Amazon small-business credit card portfolios. Mastercard will act as the network provider. American Express formerly ran the e-commerce giant's business credit card programs.
- What's at stake: The portfolio acquisition represents an important cross-sell opportunity for the bank to sell its services to Amazon's small-business sellers and an inroad into agentic commerce.
- Forward look: The Minneapolis-based bank plans to announce additional rewards to compliment the cards' existing cash-back rewards in late spring or early summer.
Amazon's small-business credit card portfolio has found a new home.
U.S. Bank will be the new issuer of Amazon's Business and Business Prime credit cards, and Mastercard will act as the network provider.
"Small business is a really important segment for U.S. Bank," Courtney Kelso, U.S. Bank's head of payments for consumer and small business, told American Banker. There are more than 36 million small businesses in the U.S., which contribute 43.5% of the U.S. gross domestic product, according to the U.S. Small Business Administration.
The new cards will launch in late spring or early summer with additional benefits, tools and features to the cards' existing cash-back rewards, and the portfolio migration will take place in late summer, Kelso said, but declined to specify how large the portfolio was or the price the bank paid to acquire it.
"This is a coveted portfolio," Richard Crone, CEO of Crone Consulting, told American Banker. "What PayPal [Working] Capital is for lending to businesses, this Amazon Business or Amazon Business Prime card is to small businesses. It is the linchpin for capital management."
The two credit cards are the credit lines that Amazon offers merchants that are affiliated with and sell on Amazon.com in order to provide working capital to conduct their businesses. Small businesses are
U.S. Bank has just shy of 1.5 million small-business customers to which it offers credit cards, spend management tools, and banking services such as core banking, financing, merchant services, and payments cards. Approximately 1.9 million active small- to midsize business sellers are based in the U.S. and sell on Amazon, according to the retailer.
"Convenient, rewarding payment options start with listening to the customer," said Tai Koottatep, director and general manager of worldwide B2B payments and lending at Amazon, in a statement. "Small businesses told us they wanted more ways to earn rewards wherever they shop and better tools to manage cash flow. We partnered with U.S. Bank and Mastercard to build a card program that delivers exactly that."
Amazon's business credit cards offer an important gateway for the bank to cross-sell other banking services to a new cohort of small businesses, according to Crone.
But the portfolio represents more than a cross-sell opportunity for U.S. Bank; it's an inroad into agentic commerce with the largest e-commerce retailer in the country. Amazon holds about 42% of e-commerce market share in the U.S.
"Amazon is the only one doing agentic commerce at scale right now with Rufus and with something called Buy for Me," Crone said. Rufus is Amazon's AI shopping assistant that helps customers find products on its marketplace, and Buy for Me is another AI feature that helps its customers find and buy products from third-party websites if those products are not available on Amazon's marketplace.
"The real upside is using that payment credential to track intent and business buyer reasoning and the deliberations that they go through in what they acquire for their business," Crone said.
The cards are built for the digital-first economy and agentic commerce, Eimear Creaven, president of global partnerships at Mastercard, told American Banker.
"It is this idea around how we bring together security tools, how we bring together insights that can help the businesses make smarter purchasing decisions and help them understand where they can optimize their spend," Creaven said. "We're going to make sure that these cards, from a technology perspective, are well set up for the agentic space. And, of course, working with partners like Amazon, who are so embedded in the AI world, we are going to be building out a roadmap and building out tools that will support small businesses in that space."
Mastercard has been aggressive in
U.S. Bank's acquisition of the portfolio comes nearly three months after JPMorganChase secured
It also comes at a time when competition for new-account acquisition among credit card issuers is elevated, according to TD Cowen, which analyzed direct mail campaigns from credit card issuers. Direct mail is a major marketing channel for credit cards, making mail volume an important indicator of competitive intensity in the industry, according to TD Cowen analysts. Card issuers mailed 320 million credit card offers in February, an increase of 20% year over year.
"Competition remains relatively high, and account acquisitions have continued to be strong – 2025 [was] up 4.2% year over year and higher than 2019 – as issuers continue to lean into marketing," TD Cowen analysts said.
