Amazon launches community loan program to help small and medium-sized enterprises grow

E-commerce giant Amazon is partnering with Lendistry, a community development financial institution, to provide sellers with more business funding support through the Amazon Lending Program .

It is reported that through this joint pilot program called Amazon Community Loans, the two companies will provide loans of up to $100,000 to small and medium-sized businesses to help them increase inventory , build brands , and acquire customers.

The loan program launched by Amazon and Lendistry has a term of up to two years , with loan amounts ranging from $10,000 to $ 100,000 and annual interest rates ranging from 8% to 9.9%.

The community loan program will provide loan support to almost all small and medium-sized Amazon sellers headquartered in the United States . Amazon said these short-term loans are competitive and have relatively favorable interest rates .

Amazon sellers can use these loans to grow their business on the Amazon platform and meet other strategic needs, including staffing and operations, inventory , product development and manufacturing, and marketing .

According to statistics , third-party sellers account for more than half of the total items sold in Amazon stores . During Prime Day 2021 alone , small and medium-sized enterprise sellers provided more than 1 million transactions.

Amazon began offering loans to businesses selling on its platform in 2011. As of this year, Amazon and third-party lending partners have provided more than $800 million in loans to small and medium-sized enterprises in the United States .

According to Amazon, the platform invested more than $18 billion in third-party merchants in 2020 , and will continue to invest more than $100 million to support small and medium-sized businesses from Prime Day in June 2021 to the rest of the year .

Lendistry founder Everett K. Sands said the Amazon seller community is the best place to support financing programs for small and medium-sized enterprises , and this move can bring changes to many businesses.

The community loan program launched by Amazon this time has indeed provided great help to small and medium-sized enterprises. The acquisition of key working capital will provide more development opportunities for small and medium-sized enterprises and help American small and medium-sized enterprises better sell on the Amazon platform .

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