"Buy with Prime," but make it nerdy

Amazon are copy-pasting a feature from their consumer side (Prime) to their cloud-computing business side (AWS); and the crowd goes wild.

First, there was "Buy with Prime"

In 2022, Amazon released Buy with Prime, a button allowing Prime members to check out from non-Amazon websites.

For a fee, retailers got to reach ~168 million customers (~180 million today), make their purchasing journey simpler, and hand over all fulfilment to Amazon. In September, Amazon announced purchases through Buy with Prime were up 45% year-on-year -- not too shabby.

Now, there's "Buy with AWS"

Building on the success of "Buy with Prime", Amazon are copy-pasting the principle to their cloud-computing business.

AWS VP of Marketplace & Partner Services Matt Yanchyshyn says "Buy with AWS is ultimately a very different use case [from Buy with Prime]," but you be the judge of that.

Amazon partners like Workday or Databricks now offer their customers the option to purchase their software via AWS credit. Sounds pretty similar.

The use cases for this feature are simple:

• It's easier for customers to purchase software.

• It keeps the purchase in the AWS ecosystem.

• AWS is a highly recognisable brand, which companies like Workday can leverage for trust in their own brand.

If it works, it works!