If taken at face value, that's what their FAQ suggests. I'm partially reposting a comment I made above, since you seem to be the only other person here who is t

If taken at face value, that's what their FAQ suggests. I'm partially reposting a comment I made above, since you seem to be the only other person here who is thinking along the same lines as I am. 2) Where can I use Amazon Cash? We have partnered with thousands of stores across the country, including CVS Pharmacy®, Speedway, Sheetz, Kum & Go, D&W Fresh Market, Family Fare Supermarkets, and VG's Grocery with more retailers coming soon. A directory of all participating stores can be found at www.amazon.com/cash. Are they saying you can also spend your 'Amazon dollars' at those stores? Assuming the answer is 'yes', it means Amazon is looking to get a slice of that sweet sweet payment intermediary industry pie. But more importantly, they get these retailers' data for cheap and can figure out exactly where the marginal price for it lies. Think about it. These retailers might be paying Visa 2.5% transaction processing fees. Along comes Amazon who offer, say 2% fees (which might be roughly the rate they've negotiated for themselves with large payment processors). Using CVS as an example: Amazon start offering CVS customers varying rebates / fixed percentage discounts like: anything you buy from CVS with 'Amazon Bucks' only deducts 95% of your sales docket total from your 'Amazon not a bank account'. CVS will want their money either at point of sale or, at the very latest, through an end of day reconciliation. So in the interests of 'fraud protection' they will need to provide sales data to Amazon for those purchases. This is bad for CVS because: - Amazon would be able to see what CVS customers are buying, for what price and in what combination. That would make it pretty easy for Amazon to gradually pick off CVS customers. - I imagine Amazon would probably loss-lead for a while until they've become the dominant form of payment. If a large enough percentage of CVS' sales were settled in Amazon bucks (which Amazon can incentivise through rebates and discounts, hence the initial loss-lead), it puts Amazon in a position where they can 'tax' one of their retail competitors by jacking up 'transaction processing' fees. I might be totally misunderstanding the situation here, and it's just a case of the FAQ being poorly worded. Otherwise, large retailers who sign up to this are committing a fatal strategic mistake (although I imagine the bean-counters would love it, not realising the long-term implications).