Amazon leaves the student loan business after six weeks

Amazon's foray into the student loan business lasted only six weeks.

Six weeks after announcing a partnership with Wells Fargo to offer a 0.5 percent interest rate discount on student loans to members of Prime Student, the companies have walked away from the deal.

"That promotion for Prime Student members has ended," Amazon spokeswoman Deborah Bass said in an email.

A spokesperson for Wells Fargo gave a similar statement to Bloomberg, which first reported the end of the deal.

The two companies had worked on the partnership for more than a year. When they announced the program in July, Amazon said in a statement:

"Amazon has a track record of investing in great offerings for students, starting with the Amazon Prime Student program.  We’re excited to extend this new offering from Wells Fargo to our Prime Student members."

The materials surrounding the partnership gave no indication that it was meant to be temporary.

The partnership seemed designed on Amazon's end to get students to sign up for Amazon Prime, which costs $49 a year at the student rate.

But it drew criticism from consumer advocates who said it was a return to the misleading private loan marketing that abounded before the financial crisis, Bloomberg reported. Wells Fargo's student loans are private loans, which come with higher interest rates than federal loans.

Wells Fargo is a distant second to the nation's largest private student loan lender, Sallie Mae.

Amazon offers small business loans through Amazon Lending, the invitation-only loan program for third-party sellers it launched in 2012. But this was the company's only involvement in the student loan market.

Now, both companies have scrubbed mention of the other from their websites.

Private student loans are a booming industry, albeit one that has faced criticism. For the 2014-2015 academic year, students and parents borrowed $106.1 billion, 10 percent of which was nonfederal loans, according to the College Board. According to the Wall Street Journal, the amount of money loaned to borrowers by the five biggest private lenders between July 2015 and March 2016 grew 7 percent from the prior year.

UPDATE: Aug. 31, 2016, 5:46 p.m. EDT This post originally reported on the partnership between Amazon and Wells Fargo, and has been updated to reflect its end.