Whole Paycheck: Amazon Makes Nice With Joe Biden But Sues The EU; Walmart Pushes Deeper Into Financial Services

The race for the consumers’ whole paycheck continued this week between Amazon and Walmart, with Amazon pushing back against Italian antitrust regulators even as the eCommerce giant tried to play nice with new U.S. President Joe Biden. Meanwhile, Walmart pushed deeper into a new financial services initiative.

Here’s a look at some of the week’s biggest developments for the two retail rivals:

Amazon Offers to Help Biden With COVID-19 Vaccinations

Dave Clark, Amazon’s CEO for its worldwide consumer business, wrote new President Joe Biden on Inauguration Day to congratulate the incoming leader — and to offer assistance in fighting COVID-19.

Biden has set a goal of vaccinating 100 million Americans against COVID in his first 100 days in office, and Clark wrote that “Amazon stands ready to assist you in reaching your goal.”

He noted that Amazon is America’s second-largest employer, with more than 800,000 U.S. staffers, “most of whom are essential workers who cannot work from home.”

“The essential employees working at Amazon fulfillment centers, AWS data centers and Whole Foods Market stores across the country who cannot work from home should receive the COVID-19 vaccine at the earliest appropriate time, [and] we will assist them in that effort,” Clark wrote.

He said the company has an agreement with a licensed third-party occupational healthcare provider to administer vaccines on-site at Amazon facilities, and “we are prepared to move quickly once vaccines are available.”

Clark added that Amazon is also “prepared to leverage our operations, information technology and communications capabilities and expertise to assist your administration’s vaccination efforts” for other Americans as well.

“Our scale allows us to make a meaningful impact immediately in the fight against COVID-19, and we stand ready to assist you in this effort,” he wrote. “Since the beginning of this crisis, we have worked hard to keep our workers safe. We are committed to assisting your administration’s vaccination efforts as we work together to protect our employees and continue to provide essential services during the pandemic.”

While Amazon’s offer to help won’t directly help it win a larger share of the consumers’ whole paycheck, whatever goodwill the company can generate with the new Biden administration won’t hurt at a time when both Democrats and Republicans are beating up on Big Tech.

Amazon Sues to Combine EU and Italian Antitrust Probes

Amazon’s relations with the European Union, as opposed to the United States, were decidedly less cordial this week, as the eCommerce giant filed a lawsuit in the European Union’s second-highest court against EU regulators.

According to Reuters, Amazon argued that EU regulators improperly let Italian antitrust officials continue an investigation into Amazon’s business practices that began in 2019, but is similar to a recent probe by the EU’s competition watchdog.

The European Commission launched an investigation in November into how the company determines the winners of its “buy box,” which enables shoppers to select merchandise from particular vendors. The probe will also dig into how Amazon decides who should get preferential treatment.

The European Commission wants to know if Amazon uses its dominant position in the market to take advantage of the smaller stores on its eCommerce platform. However, Amazon argued before the court that authorities should combine the EU and Italian probes into one for the sake of efficiency.

“When the European Commission decides to investigate a matter, European law says that national competition authorities cannot investigate the same topic,” Amazon said in a statement, as per Reuters. “This did not occur in this instance, as the Commission’s opening decision attempts to exclude Italy.”

Amazon asked the EU’s General Court in Luxembourg to annul that and order the Italian case to be absorbed into the European Commission’s probe.

Walmart Teams Up With Western Union

Walmart avoided major dealings with both the U.S. and EU governments this week, focusing instead on pushing beyond retail and deeper into financial services.

The company already has existing in-house financial services and third-party partnerships that offer such products as the Walmart Credit Card, Walmart Money Card, check cashing, money transfers, installment financing and more.

But Walmart this week announced a new team-up with Western Union to offer enhanced domestic and international money transfers, bill payments and money orders at 4,700 of its U.S. stores.

“Walmart is much more than a place where customers shop. To millions, it’s also a place they trust for their financial needs as well,” Wilbert Noronha, Walmart’s vice president of financial services, said in announcing the deal. “We’re thrilled to soon begin offering Western Union money transfer services at Walmart locations nationwide and, together, continue connecting family and friends worldwide through Western Union’s global money movement platform.”

Jean Claude Farah, Western Union’s president of global networks, said the tie-up will bring “the best of our money movement and payments service capabilities” to expanded consumer populations across the country and globe.

“Together with Walmart, we have a shared purpose of supporting our customers who rely on us to send money to make everyday purchases, including essentials like healthcare and groceries,” Farah said. “In an age when speed, security, convenience and trust mean everything, we are offering customers greater ease, reliability, access and confidence with every transaction.”

The deal means that Walmart’s customers will have the ability to move money to family and loved ones almost anywhere around the world using Western Union’s global cross-border, cross-currency platform.

Western Union operates in 200 countries and territories worldwide. Customers can have money transfers being paid out in minutes across more than 550,000 retail locations or into billions of bank accounts, wallets or cards. Western Union said in November that the pandemic had fueled heightened demand for money transfers both in the United States and overseas.

Walmart’s Western Union deal represents the chain’s second foray into financial services in as many weeks. Earlier this month, Walmart announced plans to create its own FinTech firm with a company called Ribbit Capital.

Ribbit Capital is a global investment firm whose existing portfolio includes popular investing platform Robinhood, consumer technology platform Credit Karma and hot financing firm Affirm, which specializes in buy now, pay later financing (BNPL) for consumers.