That's one way of looking at it. And definitely a plausible move for Amazon for the reasons you outlined. Especially if the long term strategic goal of Amazon

That's one way of looking at it. And definitely a plausible move for Amazon for the reasons you outlined. Especially if the long term strategic goal of Amazon lockers / physical points of presence is to morph into 711-style "80% of what you need in life". Which they could naturally have delivered to you within an hour. An alternative thread, which I'll admit to cribbing from someone else's comment on the "Betterment" HN post, is that this is about the other side of the game (or even lower on the food chain): becoming a bank. Assets under management affords the opportunity to do everything else. And it makes it impossible for anyone else to cut you out, once you scale to a "too big to ignore" size. Amazon payments from Amazon accounts? Suddenly you're saving credit card fees + making interest on balances. Which you can roll into being that much cheaper than Walmart. If you get assets stored under your control, that's the ultimate vertical integration.