Amazon's Latest Prime Perk: 5% Cash Back at Whole Foods

This week, Amazon.com announced a 5 percent cash-back reward program for Whole Foods shoppers who use the Amazon Prime Rewards Visa card when making their purchases. CNBC reports cardholders who aren't members of Amazon's $99 yearly subscription service will get 3 percent cash back on their Whole Foods purchases. "We're excited to launch the Amazon Rewards Visa Card in our stores, offering benefits to our customers on all of their purchases at Whole Foods Market," said Whole Foods CEO John Mackey in a release. Amazon currently offers the same cash-back rewards program to cardholders for purchases from its primary website.

Total Retail's Take: Amazon is working Whole Foods more and more into its business under the direction of Greg Greeley, vice president of Amazon Prime. Last week, Whole Foods announced a two-hour delivery service for the grocery chain. Now Amazon announces further customer loyalty incentives tied into Whole Foods. When you spend $13.7 billion to acquire a company — as Amazon did when it purchased Whole Foods in June 2017 — it makes sense that you would try to find ways to integrate that new business into your current offerings to optimize sales, profits and customer loyalty. So what will the cash-back reward program mean for Whole Foods shoppers in the long run? Tom Caporaso, CEO of Clarus Commerce, shares his thoughts below:

“In addition to cutting prices, selling Echo speakers, and delivering groceries with Prime, which is becoming the premium loyalty program for Whole Foods, rewarding Amazon Visa rewards cardholders is the latest piece of the grocery takeover puzzle for Amazon.

"Together, these pieces will help position Amazon to disrupt grocery the way it does best: by building a shopping ecosystem that integrates into consumers’ daily lives and makes it easy to shop.

"This is just the beginning. We’re sure to see more grocery benefits coming along for Prime members.”