We should stop considering Facebook just a social network, e Amazon only as the global delivery giant. By now, many of us already experience it, some of the American big techs are much more than this: they are champions of diversification and even their core business is not or soon may no longer be what they are best known for today. The conversion of Amazon is already known: we all know the "beast" of Jeff Bezos as number one in e-commerce, but in reality it is Amazon Web Services, the platform that sells clouds and hardware, that grinds the most profits. Not only that: some of us already watch TV series on Amazon Prime Video, but from this season millions of football fans will be able to follow the Champions League matches there. The latest sensational news? Amazon, which has brought small traders to their knees with its record-breaking deliveries, wants to overdo it and also become a physical store.
It's no joke: according to the Wall Street Journal, Bezos, who in the meantime has also taken a tour of Space (another new business), is preparing a series of department store openings in the United States, to boost the sales of products such as clothing, household products and electronics. Currently Amazon already has physical stores for books and groceries and operates pop-ups in at least 13 US states, including California, Colorado and Washington, but the first full-fledged malls (albeit smaller than those “ traditional", 3.000 square meters instead of 10.000), should open in Ohio and California and among the items on sale a leading role should be played by own-brand products from Jeff Bezos' creature.
Even more challenging is the new adventure of Facebook, which has the ambition of becoming a de facto bank. The experiment will be held in India, which thus becomes the financial laboratory of Mark Zuckerberg's group: in the Asian country, which with its 1,4 billion inhabitants is potentially a huge market, Facebook is launching a funding program for small and medium-sized businesses local businesses. The loans will be disbursed through the distribution network of the Indian partner Indifi: the loan cut will initially be small, between 500.000 and 5 million rupees, ie between 6.700 and 67.000 dollars. The interest rate will vary between 17% and 20%. Facebook had already entered digital payments three years ago in India, through WhatsApp, the messaging app that is used by over 200 million people in the Asian country.
