Amazon Prime Week is here, and while millions of shoppers get ready to click “buy now” on exclusive Amazon deals, small and midsize merchants have a major opportunity of their own. Prime Week is no longer just an Amazon event — it has become a full-blown cultural moment that fuels online shopping across the entire retail landscape.
In 2024, Amazon’s two-day Prime event achieved record-breaking sales, with U.S. consumers spending $14.2 billion online, an 11% increase from the previous year. Independent sellers, primarily small and medium-sized businesses, contributed significantly by selling over 200 million items during the two-day event. But here’s the kicker: non-Amazon retailers saw a 52% increase in clicks and a 41% jump in transactions, according to Impact.com. That surge in ecommerce activity wasn’t limited to Amazon’s marketplace — it benefited merchants across channels, both online and in-store.
So, how can payment providers and their merchants, as well as SaaS (software as a service) platforms, tap into this frenzy? With the right tools, timing and tactics, Prime Week can become your week too.
Why Prime Week Is Bigger Than Amazon
What started as a single-day birthday celebration for Amazon Prime members has evolved into a summer shopping holiday rivaling Black Friday. Gen Z and Millennial shoppers now treat Prime Week as a multi-platform event—58% of Gen Z and 53% of Millennials participated last year, and many of them shopped beyond Amazon.
This means that every merchant has a chance to compete, even without selling through Amazon Marketplace. For SaaS platforms and payment providers, this is the perfect opportunity to support merchants with promotional tools, seamless payment flows and smart ecommerce strategies.
3 Ways to Help Your Merchants Win Prime Week (Even if They’re Not on Amazon)
1. Create Limited-Time Bundles and Exclusive Offers
Amazon might have scale, but smaller sellers can compete with creativity. Encourage merchants to build exclusive product bundles that provide added value rather than deeper discounts. This keeps margins healthy while offering something Amazon can’t replicate.
Remember: 87% of consumers say they’re more likely to shop with brands that offer instant rewards and personalized perks, so make sure any loyalty or discount program messaging is front and center.
2. Match Amazon’s Speed with Frictionless Checkout
Amazon’s one-click checkout is hard to beat, but it’s not out of reach. Tools like NMI Customer Vault, Automatic Card Updater and digital wallet integrations (Apple Pay, Google Pay, etc.) make it easy to offer:
- Stored payment methods
- Automatic card updates
- Recurring billing
- Fast, low-friction checkout experiences
More than 70% of Gen Z now pay through apps daily, and 50% of consumers say payment convenience drives their decisions. Make checkout speed a priority.
3. Maximize Next-Gen Payment Options — And Meet Consumers Everywhere They Shop
Today’s shoppers, especially Gen Z and Millennials, don’t distinguish between online and offline; it’s all commerce to them. They’ll research a product on TikTok, compare prices on a mobile site, and walk into a store to buy it, or complete the loop entirely online with one-click checkout.
This always-on, everywhere commerce journey is expected. In fact, Gen Z and Millennials are more than twice as likely as older generations to engage with omnichannel shopping, jumping between Instagram ads, in-app purchases, local pop-ups and same-day delivery without blinking.
For payment providers and SaaS platforms, just offering online and in-store options isn’t enough anymore. To truly meet the expectations of modern merchants and their digitally native customers, you need to:
- Support omnichannel payments that unify the customer journey across web, app, social and brick-and-mortar. Helping merchants connect their digital and physical storefronts is key
- Offer integrated solutions that combine payment acceptance, rewards and customer data in one seamless experience
- Enable plug-and-play functionality so merchants can activate these tools without needing a developer team
With our embedded payments platform, you can give merchants the tools they need to sell across every channel and capture every sale, wherever and however customers want to pay, even for micro-merchants.
Your Prime Opportunity: Be the Partner Behind Their Success
Prime Week isn’t just Amazon’s big moment; it’s your merchants’ too. And with the right embedded payment tools, sales enablement strategies, and marketing support, you can empower them to capitalize on shopper intent, drive conversion and grow loyalty.
NMI gives SaaS platforms, ISVs (independent software vendors) and payment providers everything needed to unlock value:
- Embedded payment flows for ecommerce, in-app and point-of-sale
- Tokenized card storage and secure transaction processing
- Tools to power rewards, recurring billing and seamless user experiences
Let’s Make Prime Week Your Best Yet
Want to help your merchants win this Prime Week and beyond? Reach out to NMI to see how our flexible, modular, embedded payments acceptance platform can turn seasonal spikes into long-term growth.