Amazon’s Potential Defense

Posted by Bloomberg

Amazon’s Potential Defense-Bill Windfall Spurs Industry Concern

By Sam Skolnik

Amazon has quietly been formalizing and expanding its relationships with several federal agencies as Congress is weighing an online marketplace provision that could enrich the e-commerce giant by billions of dollars per year, Bloomberg Government has learned.

After the company alerted the Homeland Security Department in April 2016 that agency officials already had several thousand accounts with Amazon, and several hundred more with Amazon Business, Amazon’s business-to-business unit, DHS began to consolidate individual government purchase card accounts into one centralized account, agency spokeswoman Lauren Blakeney said.

All DHS components were onboard with the new program by March of this year, Blakeney said. She could not say by deadline whether this effort has resulted in increased sales for Amazon.

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