Amazon.com Inc will expand its business loan program for small sellers later this year in eight more countries, and Canada is one of them.
Reuters (via The Globe and Mail) reports that Amazon Lending, which was only available in Japan and the United States, will be available in Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Italy, Spain, and the United Kingdom. The service offers short-term working capital loans in countries where it operates third-party, seller-run marketplace business.
Amazon offers three to six-month loans of $1,000 to $600,000 to help merchants buy inventory. The company makes money on interest and takes a cut of all sales on its marketplace, which now account for about 40 percent of total Amazon site sales.
Peter Faricy, head of Amazon Marketplace, told Reuters that Amazon chooses sellers based on internal algorithms that determine the frequency with which they run out of stock, the popularity of their products, and their inventory cycles. The service is on an invite-only basis.