For five years, Amazon.com has quietly been making small loans to a few of the merchants that sell on the e-commerce giant’s website. Now that little effort has become a decent-sized business.
Amazon revealed recently that total outstanding loans to merchants had nearly doubled to $661 million on Dec. 31 from $337 million a year earlier. The disclosure, in a Securities and Exchange Commission filing, was the first time Amazon has broken out the figures for the lending program.
