PSCU: Prime Day Provides Boost to Credit Unions

St. Petersburg, Fla.-based payments CUSO, PSCU, reported its owner credit unions experienced banner results during 2019’s two-day Amazon Prime Day shopping fury, helped by promotional programs offered through PSCU’s Advisors Plus.

Data gathered by PSCU indicated that owner credit unions experienced a 31% growth in total transactions year over year and a 46% increase in total sales volume compared to 2018 during this year’s Amazon Prime Day, which resulted in the largest shopping event ever for the e-commerce titan.

Prime Day 2019 totaled over 175 million items sold on July 15 and 16, exceeding sales for the previous Black Friday and Cyber Monday events combined. The summer sales event was also another record-breaking success for independent third-party sellers—mostly small and medium-sized businesses. Globally, these businesses far surpassed $2 billion in sales, making it the biggest Amazon shopping event ever for third-party sellers when comparing two-day periods.

Meanwhile, a range of rival merchants launched their own sales, including Target, Walmart and eBay, eager to entice some shoppers as well. Apparently, it worked. On the first day of Amazon’s 48-hour sales event, large retailers enjoyed a 64% increase in online sales compared with an average Monday, according to Adobe Analytics. That compares to 2018’s 54%. In addition, smaller retailers, with less than $5 million in annual revenue, saw a 30% increase in online sales, the report added.

According to PSCU, when looking at the various types of online-based merchants, Amazon drives about half of the total transaction volume. PSCU’s Advisors Plus — which offers consulting services for credit unions to help fuel growth and achieve financial and business goals – made numerous promotional programs available for this year’s Amazon Prime Day to ensure their cards positioning at the coveted top-of-wallet. Campaigns offered cash-back incentives at about 2% for cardholders making purchases on Amazon Prime Day using their credit union-issued debit and/or credit cards.

As a result, PSCU Owners saw growth in transactions of more than 23% for credit cards and 37% for debit cards during Amazon Prime Day year over year, while sales volume for both credit and debit cards experienced an increase of approximately 46%.

“Amazon Prime Day is an exceptionally visible event with broad marketability – and it gets bigger every year. With the overall increase in transactions taking place online, it is imperative that credit unions be part of the online shopping experience, and we wanted to help our owner credit unions better compete and benefit from events like Amazon Prime Day,” Glynn Frechette, senior vice president of PSCU’s Advisors Plus, said. “We are very pleased to see that the ‘Top of Wallet’ programs we put in place with our owners helped lead to a marked increase in transactions and sales volume for this year’s Amazon Prime Day. With back-to-school and holiday shopping seasons around the corner, PSCU and Advisors Plus will continue to work with our credit unions to optimize transactions, increase sales volume and remain in the top-of-wallet spot.”

To calculate 2019 Amazon Prime Day findings, PSCU’s data and analytics team compiled and analyzed information from credit unions using the CUSO for debit and/or credit processing during both the 2019 and 2018 shopping events. PSCU compared information from two full-day periods, year-over-year.

“At PSCU, we find it is not only important to arm our owners with the tools they need to market offerings to their members, but also to provide quick reporting and analysis for Owners to see firsthand how these programs impacted their operations and bottom lines,” Jeff Carelli, senior vice president of data and analytics at PSCU. said. “This data is key for credit unions to leverage when determining the types of programs and initiatives they want to offer their members in the future.”

PSCU, which supports 1,500 credit unions representing more than 2.6 billion transactions annually,  pointed out its advanced analytics tools and member insight, helps credit unions uncover the information they need to understand the performance, profitability, growth opportunities and risk mitigation in their credit, debit, bill pay and ATM portfolios.