Amazon.com Inc. is negotiating with leading banks to develop a financial service that would offer features similar to a checking account for online shoppers.

 According to a Wall Street Journal report published this morning, anonymous sources named JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Capital One Financial Corp. among the institutions involved in the talks. They said the plan is in too early a stage to determine if it will come to fruition.

Nonetheless, Amazon apparently already has a fairly clear vision of what it hopes to achieve with the proposed service. The sources said that the company’s plan is target younger consumers and people without bank accounts. Amazon reportedly hopes that taking on a bigger role in the management of shoppers’ purchases will help it lower the fees that it currently pays to banking partners for transaction processing.

However, the company’s reported push to partner with Wall Street institutions suggests that it intends to assume only a limited portion of the financial responsibilities directly. Offloading key tasks to a bank could help Amazon avoid some of the strict regulations imposed on financial service providers, which would ease go-to-market efforts. That’s the same reason many of the financial technology startups currently offering online banking services forge partnerships with established institutions.

On top of lowering transaction processing expenses, Amazon’s proposed checking account service reportedly has another objective. The tipsters said that the company hopes to use the product as a way of gaining deeper insight into consumer spending patterns. It could employ such information to develop better offers and potentially even new products.

That JPMorgan Chase & Co. is seemingly among the first banks Amazon has approached about the project is most likely no coincidence. The retail giant already works with the Wall Street giant to offer cobranded credit cards to customers and the companies recently struck a new partnership to provide healthcare services for their employees.

Banking is just one of several areas that Amazon has reportedly set its sights on in recent months. Other recent leaks suggest that the company is preparing to launch a package delivery service to take on FedEx Corp., as well as a new medical supplies operation geared toward hospitals.

Image: Amazon