One year later, the company said it is more than a third of the way to that goal. Amazon announced Monday (June 1) it has invested 15 billion pounds (about $20 billion) so far.
“These direct investments, which are expected to contribute an estimated additional 38 billion pounds to the U.K.’s GDP, raise the economic activity in a given region and create a ripple effect through the economy as the firms that supply goods and services to Amazon expand and associated household spending increases,” the company said.
The investments thus far have included opening new operation sites, launching drone deliveries and expanding studio production operations, while also opening a new London campus. Veeqo—the shipping technology start-up acquired by Amazon in 2021—also recently opened a new development center, the announcement added.
Amazon’s other big move in the U.K. this year involved the launch of its Pay By Bank service to British customers in February, with plans to eventually extend the offering beyond retail purchases to cover Prime membership payments.
“That expansion matters. Subscription payments introduce repetition and habit, two factors that historically determine whether new payment methods gain traction,” PYMNTS wrote. “By embedding Pay by Bank into Prime, Amazon would place account-to-account payments alongside cards in one of the most frequently billed consumer relationships in the U.K.”
In other Amazon news, PYMNTS wrote last week about the evolution of the role the company—and rival Walmart—plays in the retail world.
“For Amazon and Walmart, the question is no longer just how Americans shop. It is who controls the systems underneath that shopping,” that report said. “Recognizing this, the two category leaders are responding by reducing much of their dependence on traditional retail economics altogether. Advertising, subscription services, logistics, cloud computing and AI infrastructure all offer more stable and scalable revenue streams than pure merchandise sales.”
The companies still need shoppers, but increasingly also need businesses, developers and advertisers to build on top of their ecosystems. That shift changes the strategies of the companies, as lower sales matter less if the larger infrastructure business keeps growing.
For example, Amazon has been framing AI not solely as a way to promote in-house efficiency but also as “a service layer it can monetize externally,” the report added.
Amazon’s decision last week to offer AI-powered shopping assistants and related merchant technologies to third-party retailers “reflects a strategic play toward a high-margin, scalable business that also embeds Amazon more deeply into the operations of competitors and partners alike,” PYMNTS wrote.
