Amazon’s Credit Card Will Help You Save Money at Whole Foods

Amazon’s acquisition of Whole Foods has resulted in a lot of new changes, services, and perks very quickly. Some people can even order their Whole Foods groceries online and have them delivered to their door the same day. Now it looks like Amazon’s purchase of Whole Foods has the potential to make Amazon’s credit card a really good deal for a lot of Whole Foods shoppers.

Amazon has been offering its own credit card for years. Like many users, I’ve been seeing ads for Amazon’s credit card all over the website for so long that they barely register anymore. It’s like they’re background noise. But Forbes’ Phil Lempert writes that the credit card just announced that it would be offering a five-percent cash-back reward on all purchases at Whole Foods, and that could be enough to make a lot of users take another look.

The Amazon Prime Rewards Visa technically has no annual credit card fee, but it is just for Amazon Prime members, and Amazon Prime costs $99 a year. For customers who shop regularly at Whole Foods, that five-percent cash-back could more than pay for the cost of the Amazon Prime membership. And for Whole Foods customers who already have Prime memberships, the Amazon credit card could be looking a lot more attractive now.

To give an idea of what that five percent at Whole Foods might look like, Lempert says that a family of four spending $1,097.30 per month would get $658.38 back in a year. That’s a lot more than the $99 spent on the Prime membership, which also has benefits like free two-day shipping, and access to Amazon’s movies, music, and videos. (Including the Emmy Award-winning The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, which is so good I will not stop recommending it until everyone in the world has seen it.)

Lempert’s $1,097.30 might seem like a huge food budget, but that is the average amount spent per month on the most expensive of the USDA’s four food plans. Looking at the same USDA meal plans, a “thrifty” budget for a family of four would be $561.50 per month. If that were spent at Whole Foods on the Amazon Prime credit card, the hypothetical family would get back $336.90 for the year.

Of course, that’s only really applicable to people who are already doing a lot of their shopping at Whole Foods. A person who shops at Trader Joe’s or Aldi might not see any good reason to both sign up for a new credit card and start shopping at Whole Foods. But what this new offer could do is convince a lot of Whole Foods shoppers to sign up for Amazon’s credit card — especially if they’re already Amazon Prime members.

Do you have Amazon’s credit card?