Amazon’s unmanned store, Amazon Go, will start accepting cash as criticism grows that the company is discriminating against low-income people who don’t have bank accounts, according to media reports.
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At an internal full staff meeting last month, Steve Kessel, Amazon’s senior vice-president of physical stores, told staff that the company planned to set up “additional payment mechanisms” at its Amazon Go stores. Kessel said in response to a question about how Amazon plans to address “discrimination and elitism” in its no-teller store.
Kessel highlighted some of the new payment methods Amazon has recently added to its app, including a pilot program for government-subsidized SNAP food stamps and a new program called “Amazon Cash ”
“We are still in the early stages, but this is an important focus for us and we will continue to promote these methods in our stores,” Kessel said at the meeting. ”
Amazon already has 10 Amazon Go stores and plans to open 3,000 Amazon Go stores by 2021.
Accepting cash could help allay criticism that Amazon’s “No Teller model” has failed to serve a significant proportion of American households, while also expanding Amazon Go’s customer base.
A growing number of U.S. cities and states are enacting laws requiring stores to accept cash to meet the needs of low-income customers without bank accounts. These customers account for 6.5 percent of all U.S. households, or about 8.4 million, according to the federal deposit insurance corporation’s 2017 report.