SoylentNews

takyon writes:

Amazon has reported that it has reached 100 million Prime subscribers worldwide:

The big numerical reveal on Wednesday was Amazon.com Inc. finally spilling the beans on the number of Prime members (more than 100 million). It also disclosed another number that shows how much it relies on an army of people moving physical merchandise around the world: $28,446.

That's the median annual compensation of Amazon employees. Amazon reported this number for the first time under a new requirement that companies disclose the gap between pay for the rank-and-file and the person in the corner office. (Amazon Chief Executive Officer Jeff Bezos, the world's richest person, reported total compensation of $1.68 million last year. As in prior years, he didn't take a stock bonus, collected a salary of $81,840 and had $1.6 million in personal security costs that Amazon covered.)

However, there's still more work to be done for the company to reach more Americans:

But that figure only gives a surface-level view into the success and current challenges of Amazon's loyalty program — chief among them, how to keep growing in the country where Prime is the most popular and the biggest money-maker: Right here in the U.S. [...] As of August 2016, 60 percent of U.S. households with income of at least $150,000 had Prime memberships, according to research from Cowen and Company. Compare that with around 40 percent of households that made between $40,000 and $50,000 a year, and just 30 percent of those who earned less than $25,000.

[...] In 2017, Amazon unveiled Amazon Cash, a way for shoppers who don't have credit or debit cards to load money into their Amazon accounts by handing over cash at partnering retail stores. In the process, one roadblock to shopping on Amazon for those without bank accounts was lowered.

Two months later, Amazon introduced a 45 percent discount to the Amazon Prime monthly fee for those shoppers who receive certain forms of government assistance; the service cost them just $5.99 a month. And just this March, Amazon added Medicaid recipients to the group eligible for that discount.

Related: Amazon Prime... For Medicaid Recipients

Original Submission