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In Amazon's latest attempt to entice shoppers into its premium Prime program, Wells Fargo will cut half a percentage point from its interest rate on student loans to Amazon customers who pay for a "Prime Student" subscription, which provides the traditional Prime benefits such as free two-day shipping and access to movies, television shows and photo storage. The subscription-based service will cost $49 a year, half the regular Amazon Prime fee.
Wells Fargo, Buffet's favorite US bank, will benefit by expanding the size of its student loan portfolio. The third largest U.S. bank by assets and the second-largest private student lender by origination volume, is interested in "meeting our customers where they are – and increasingly that is in the digital space," John Rasmussen, head of Wells Fargo's Personal Lending Group, said in a news release. The bank had $12.2 billion in student loans outstanding at the end of 2015, compared with $11.9 billion at the end of 2014.
[...] According to the details of the agreement, the companies aren't compensating each other for what Wells Fargo describes as a multiyear agreement that will reach millions of potential borrowers. The Amazon spokeswoman said Wells Fargo is currently the only student lender that will provide loan offers to Prime Student members.
Source: ZeroHedge
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 23 2016, @06:24AM
I keep thinking we would be better off if loans were legally required to be sold separately from other goods and services.
The market is much harder for consumers to navigate and compare things in if stupid combo deals like this exist (amazon prime + student loans, subsidized cell phones, interest free period on particular car+ loan deals etc). Banning them doesn't lose anything of value: you could choose the best loan, and the best product rather than some random combo deal. These combo' should be illegal because we would be better off if they were. Laws are for the people, not the companies. Economically it is the role of the government to enable efficient competition to benefit the consumers, not enable complex multi-party deals to benefit the established players in the market.
I feel the same way about pairing of ISP and content providers (we give them safe harbor so they are not liable for how we use the connection but don't enforce net neutrality? Screw that business favored crap). Vertical integration when it does not actually improve production efficiency harms market efficiency and the consumers lose.