Shoppers Embrace Embedded Payments in Shift From Prime Day Splurging to Savings

Amazon Prime Day generated nearly $15 billion last year. The sales event, extended to four days for the first time ever this year, has long been the eCommerce juggernaut’s crown jewel, a blockbuster sales event that once redefined the online retail calendar.

But this year, the story could be different. Macro uncertainty, tariff turbulence and the evolution of consumer behavior against a backdrop of softening confidence could signal a deeper recalibration of consumer behavior, payment innovation and the digital commerce ecosystem itself.

According to early reports, spending at the start of Prime Day Tuesday (July 8) was down 14%. PYMNTS Intelligence data across multiple surveys helps provide key insights that reveal spending may have dropped not due to a lack of interest in the event, but because of tighter budgets and rising skepticism over perceived value.

Flash deals on electronics, once the hallmark of Prime Day, underperformed per Tuesday sales data, while essentials like home goods, pet care, and household appliances fared better. It’s a shift from impulse to pragmatism. Today’s shoppers are digitally native but financially mindful.

Unlike the frictionless binge-buying behavior Amazon helped cultivate in the 2010s, 2025’s shoppers pause. They compare. They calculate.

Read more: Amazon, Walmart Summer Sales Become Stress Test for Consumer Spending

Payments Disruption Quietly Shaping Checkout Behavior

According to numbers shared with PYMNTS, Tuesday’s Prime Day kick off this year managed to surpass Thanksgiving 2024’s $6.1 billion in eCommerce spend; with the majority (50.2%) of sales coming through a mobile device.

Prime Day’s spending contexts are also a reflection of subtle but seismic changes in how consumers pay. The old model — credit card plus shipping address — is fading. Instead, new habits are being formed around wallets, embedded finance and more payments innovations. Buy now, pay later (BNPL) orders for Amazon’s Prime Day, for example, were up 13.6% year over year for Tuesday’s shopping event per the same numbers shared with PYMNTS by Adobe.

The PYMNTS Intelligence report, “Pay Later Revolution: Redefining the Credit Economy,” found that U.S. BNPL transactions currently total $175 billion, with nearly 30% of all BNPL loans past due as of January 2025. Separate PYMNTS Intelligence reported last month that more than two-thirds of consumers, at 68%, live paycheck to paycheck.

At the same time, while for years Prime Day operated in a competitive vacuum, that’s no longer the case this summer shopping season. Walmart+, Target Circle Week and even newer players like Temu and Shein are staging counter-programming campaigns with the aim of pulling dollars and attention away from Amazon’s ecosystem.

PYMNTS reported Tuesday that Walmart launched Walmart+ Week the same day Amazon launched Prime Day and that observers are watching to see if consumers will behave differently during this year’s sales events than they did during last year’s.

Both Amazon and rival Walmart are working on ways to overhaul their supply chains in response to the tariffs, and consumer optimism about the impact of the tariffs varies greatly depending on what they value in their purchases, according to the report PYMNTS Intelligence “Consumer Tariff Sentiment: Informed Americans Are Skeptical of the Benefits.”

“Inventory management is always tough, especially for seasonal products,” Matt Butler, co-founder of Tally Tumbler, told PYMNTS. “You don’t know if summer sales will be up 30% or 300%.”

PYMNTS Intelligence research has also found that more than 8 in 10 consumers are taking measures to offset the financial impact of tariffs on their bank accounts.

“In fact, the average individual is making nearly five such behavioral changes, and 44% of consumers have already changed their shopping habits in response to tariff-induced price pressures,” PYMNTS wrote.

See also: Amazon and Walmart Focus AI Investments on Their Retail Soft Spots

What Prime Day Reveals About Retail’s Next Chapter

Amazon Prime Day 2025 was still a massive success by any traditional measure — billions in revenue, millions of transactions and unmatched logistical scale. But beneath the surface, a critical shift is underway, powered by artificial intelligence (AI) innovation, payments optimization and changing consumer behavior.

Adobe said Monday (July 7) that during Amazon’s Prime Day sales event that runs from Tuesday (July 8) through Friday (July 11), it expects the amount of traffic to all U.S. retailers that comes from generative AI chat services and browsers to leap 3,200% year over year.

PYMNTS reported in December that generative AI tools like ChatGPT played a big role in holiday shopping, helping consumers find products and deals more efficiently.