*By Michael Teich*
Amazon inked a new partnership with American Express, but don't expect the financial industry to be the next area the tech giant jumps into.
"The thing that people misunderstand is that tech companies don't want to manufacture financial products," said Lex Sokolin, Global Director of Fintech Strategy at Autonomous Research. "It's about making the ecosystem and the platform more powerful, and finance is just a feature inside of that."
American Express announced Tuesday it will launch a co-branded Amazon credit card for small businesses. The move accelerates Amazon's foray into financial products and strengthens its position as a lender. The goal, Sokolin said, is to enable small businesses to finance their activities, getting more products on Amazon's platform, and ultimately driving more commerce.
Plus, the opportunity costs of devoting itself to the financial industry are too high.
"Amazon has tremendous high-growth, super interesting, blue oceans to explore,” he said. "They could be investing in building a mortgage business, or they can build artificial intelligence business."
For the full segment, [click here.](https://cheddar.com/videos/amazon-bolsters-financial-prowess-with-new-credit-card)
Catching you up on what you need to know on April 26, 2022, with Elon Musk’s purchase of Twitter for $44 billion, Russia warning of a possible threat of World War III, the FDA approving a COVID treatment for children under 12, and more.
Amid a spate of Big Tech earnings reports on the horizon, social media giant Twitter accepted Elon Musk’s $44 billion offer to buy the platform. Musk has already signaled his intention to take the company private, and Angelo Zino, a senior equity analyst for CFRA, joined Cheddar News to talk about tech-related business news and what taking Twitter private could mean for the company. "His kind of vision is clearly on softening his stance on content moderation. You're going to see him do it, and we'll kind of see what else he has in store in terms of the pipeline of enhancing the product out there," Zino said about Musk's plans. "But there's a lot more he can do as a private company than he can do as a public company."
As Bitcoin's price continues to dance around the $40,000 mark (in real-time), Jimmy Nguyen, President and Co-Founder of the Bitcoin Association for BSV, joins Cheddar News' Closing Bell, where he discusses the recent volatility that has dragged Bitcoin's price down from its all-time high of roughly $69,000 in November.
Data from a Slack Future Forum survey shows employees returning full-time to the office are not thrilled with their experience. Sheela Subramanian, vice [resident of the Future Forum, joined Cheddar News to talk about how worker satisfaction is worsening in returning to the office compared to those workers with flexible schedules. "Employers need to actually empower their teams to create team level agreements and also skill their managers to better lead distributed teams because everybody's work is different," Subramanian noted.
Geetu Sharma, Founder and Investment Manager at AlphasFuture, reacts to a wild day on Wall Street and outlines her expectations ahead of a very busy week of earnings.
