Amazon makes Whole Foods more rewarding for Prime members

Employees say the store's new "order-to-shelf" and "scorecard" systems are taking a toll on the staff. (Reuters)

Amazon paid $13.7 billion for Whole Foods, so the company is understandably very serious about making that money back several times over as soon as possible. And one way to do that is by enticing more Amazon Prime members into Whole Foods stores. So today, Amazon announced that Whole Foods is much more rewarding for Prime members.

If you are a Prime member and you use a Prime Rewards Visa card, Amazon will reward you with 5 percent back on Whole Foods Market purchases. By making this change, Amazon has aligned the Whole Foods rewards with those offered on Amazon purchases.

So taken as a whole, Amazon now offers 5 percent back on Whole Foods and Amazon purchases, 2 percent back at restaurants, gas stations, and drugstores, and 1 percent back on all other purchases. You simply need to use that Prime Rewards Visa and be a Prime subscriber. If you regularly shop at Whole Foods anyway, this could turn out to be a significant amount of cash back to spend on other Amazon purchases. There's also no cap on rewards and they never expire.

For Amazon, this is a win-win. The announcement offers an opportunity to remind everyone about Prime, the fact Amazon offers a Visa card, Whole Foods, and the very generous "5 percent back" offer. That should result in a spike in Visa card sign-ups (which also nets you up to a $70 Amazon voucher) and Prime member visits to Whole Foods.

This is just the latest in a number of incentives introduced by Amazon to get more Prime members visiting Whole Foods. While the ink was still drying on the acquisition, Amazon announced prices would be lowered on best-selling staples and that Prime would become Whole Food Market's customer reward program. Then earlier this month two-hour food deliveries were introduced.

This article originally appeared on PCMag.com.