The news: U.S. Bank will issue the new Prime Business and Amazon Business cards running on Mastercard’s network, taking over the portfolio from American Express, per a press release.

This shake-up ends Amex’s eight-year relationship with Amazon. The new cards will launch in the coming months.

Why this matters: Losing this co-brand is a hit to Amex’s portfolio, though it retains connections with the retailer—Amex cardholders can redeem their cash back for Amazon purchases. 

But this could curb Amex's SMB spend and therefore revenues, a segment many payment networks and issuers are targeting as consumer spending flattens.

For U.S. Bank, issuing two commercial cards for Amazon opens up future cross-selling opportunities for other SMB products. U.S. Bancorp CEO Gunjan Kedia has made elevating US Bank’s commercial products a top priority since her appointment to the top job last year, per Bloomberg. 

For Mastercard, these cards are a key pickup as Capital One offboards its credit portfolio onto the Discover network.

How Amex responded: It launched Graphite, a new commercial card.

With the Amazon portfolio winding down, Amex has one more card to offer businesses. While US Bank may be offering a deeper bench of rewards than Amex’s version of the Prime Business card, Amex can lean on its sterling customer satisfaction to woo clients: JD Power named Amex No. 1 in US Small Business Credit Card Customer Satisfaction for the fifth straight year—and U.S. Bank ranked dead last.

Implications for payment providers: Competition for SMB payment volume is rising, which makes offering value-driven card products tailored to SMBs’ desires even more important to secure sign-ups. 

Injecting flexibility into card experience is a winning strategy for many executives at these smaller companies: Nearly 55.9% of SMBs want payment due dates aligned with their businesses’ receivables or cash flow, per a PYMNTS Intelligence report.