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Amazon to stop accepting UK Visa credit cards

294 points by barrkel 5y ago

funshed 5y ago
UK Amex procesing fees are outragious compared to UK Visa processing fees. This does not make much logical sense to me.
rexreed 5y ago
Is it possible to feel sorry for neither of these parties? Visa sucks for raising interchange rates and Amazon sucks for blocking customers who have those cards. The customer ends up suffering since Visa will still make their revenues and Amazon doesn't care since customers will find a means to pay. All these increasing fees definitely is a sign of pending high inflation world-wide, however. We know who stands to lose from not only the higher fees but also inflation, the typical consumer.
ChrisRR 5y ago
Well that's annoying. Visa credit cards are very common in the UK, I myself use one for everything online. I don't know anyone who's got an American Express card in the UK Edit: Could it also be that Amazon offer their own Mastercard credit card and they're trying to nudge people towards that?
- em10fan 5y ago
  They aren't that common. Only 2 of the high street banks offer them, and one is moving away from them. The rest are all Mastercard.
  - DharmaPolice 5y ago
    Barclaycard was the most popular credit card in the UK at one point and they have ten million customers. As far as I know, they only offer visa credit cards.
- Kiro 5y ago
  https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29250661 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29250661 is saying the opposite so what is it?
  - fredoralive 5y ago
    Presumably confusion between debit (where Visa is common) and credit (where it isn't).
    - IanCal 5y ago
      HSBC credit cards were visa. I assume they'll change as first direct has.
      - ealexhudson 5y ago
        I got a new HSBC credit card just the other day - still Visa. If they're planning to change, they're taking their sweet time about it...
    - ChrisRR 5y ago
      HSBC and barclaycard are both Visa credit cards. Not sure about the rest
- aigo 5y ago
  Fun fact: At M&S, 12% of payments taken online for delivery to London addresses are paid by Amex. The rest of the country? <3%.
  - 00deadbeef 5y ago
    Any idea why Amex would be so popular in London? I'd never even consider an Amex card due to my perception of it being something that many places won't even accept.
    - lmm 5y ago
      Amex is positioned as a premium card for high earners, who mostly live in London.
    - hocuspocus 5y ago
      My guess: Lots of business meetings in London -> merchants need to accept Amex company cards -> people realize acceptance is high -> people look into Amex for their personal usage, for instance to enjoy higher rewards.
    - dazc 5y ago
      Status symbol?
      - billyruffian 5y ago
        I had my wallet nicked in Padstow on the last day of a trip there and was just about take the 3.5 hour drive home. Problem was I didn't have enough fuel to make it. My CC providers took ages to even answer the phone and cancel the cards. Amex dealt with it a just a few mins, arranged to courier a replacement card to me by the next day and authorised a fuelling stop for me on my way home. I'll never be without one, ever.
        dazc 5y ago
        Fair point, I wasn't aware of this feature.
- agilob 5y ago
  I never knew Visa even has credit cards, only knew about MC and I know plenty of people who use Amex for everyday shopping. It's my default for pretty much ALL online payments, even grocery deliveries.
- docdeek 5y ago
  Not sure about the UK but here in France Amazon has just started promoting a co-branded Amazon Amex card.
  - Semaphor 5y ago
    Those have existed in Germany for a long time. I got one, but canceled it after using up the 50€ they gave me because the banking interface of their partner was atrocious.
  - mytailorisrich 5y ago
    In the UK Amazon has had a co-branded Mastercard credit card for at least a decade.
bellyfullofbac 5y ago
The HN headline doesn't fit the article. UK issued Visa cards != Amazon UK, and it says Amazon.com, not Amazon UK. For example Revolut is available in a lot of countries, they're UK-based, and I'm guessing the cards are UK-issued since a lot of merchants think it's a GBP card (and they conveniently ask if they should do the currency conversion (and conveniently don't tell you their conversion rate is much higher and profits them)).
- barrkel 5y ago
  I updated it.
TekMol 5y ago
How much does Visa charge when someone pays, say, $100 to Amazon via a credit card? And if that is a substantial amount - how will the Lightning Network not drive Visa out of business?
- mjul 5y ago
  You are probably thinking about the interchange fees. [1] https://www.visa.co.uk/about-visa/visa-in-europe/fees-and-interchange.html https://www.visa.co.uk/about-visa/visa-in-europe/fees-and-in...
ashergill 5y ago
https://archive.md/n2PU8 https://archive.md/n2PU8
- aembleton 5y ago
  or https://www.bbc.com/news/business-59306200 https://www.bbc.com/news/business-59306200
barrkel 5y ago
I cannot believe that Visa transaction overhead would be higher than Amex - there's something going on behind the scenes here. I don't think this is the end of it either, it smells like a negotiation threat. Visa have a larger market share overall (80%, including debit cards [1]) but Mastercard leads in credit cards. Amex has always been fairly niche because it's not accepted everywhere. [1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/1116580/payment-card-scheme-market-share-in-europe-by-country/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/1116580/payment-card-sch... > Visa was the largest card issuer in Ireland and the United Kingdom, with market shares of over 80 percent in both countries. (from 2019) Reading further it does look like most Visa cards are debit cards and Mastercard has the lead in credit cards. PS: Comment updated after some research.
- mutatio 5y ago
  For my personal data point, 1 of 7 cards is Visa, the rest are Mastercard.
- rbanffy 5y ago
  > I cannot believe that Visa transaction overhead would be higher than Amex - there's something going on behind the scenes here. I would be willing to bet the fees Amazon gets are vastly different from the fees a small merchant has to endure. They obviously tried to squeeze a little bit more and now they’ll leave it to the shareholders to pressure the company to accept whatever Bezos wants.
- uzakov 5y ago
  I think situation in 2021 is very different in London: AMEX is accepted nearly everywhere in central London (Even on markets etc), there are ofc some shops that don't take it but generally AMEX is widely accepted. Re: Mastercard It seems that Mastercard is more widespread among "hot" banking startups, ie I can create virtual debit Mastercards on Revolut and Monzo
  - blowski 5y ago
    I'd like to see some stats on that. My own experience is much closer to that of the OP.
ZeroGravitas 5y ago
Has anyone successfully nationalised/regulated into sanity this business? It's 2021, buying stuff should involve neither precious metals nor weird faceless financial cooperatives owned by private banks.
- Mayzie 5y ago
  Pretty much all Australian & New Zealand cards use a system called EFTPOS[1] in addition to Visa / MasterCard credit since the 80s. Fees are virtually nil, and payments are instant. They cannot be used for online purchases though, I believe. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EFTPOS#Australia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EFTPOS#Australia
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- gota 5y ago
  See this comment - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29250582&p=2#29251838 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29250582&p=2#29251838 Brazil has a pretty successful system in place. The only reason I still use credit cards anymore are aggressive cashback policies. For everything I can do with PIX I'm more than likely to choose it nowadays.
- larschdk 5y ago
  Denmark has a standardized national debit card. Physical stores are not allowed to charge a fee, but online stores are (typically DKK1.50/$0.25). Works great, but obviously only for stores in Denmark. They are almost always combined with a Visa debit card on the same card for a yearly fee (typically DKK150/$25).
  - rightbyte 5y ago
    Really? Nice. There is no need to have Visa et al. take a 1-3% tax on everything.
    - blowfish721 5y ago
londons_explore 5y ago
If this is a negotiation tactic, why is it not a global proposal? Perhaps because bank transfer is very developed in the UK, and wire transfers could totally replace credit cards, with lower fees? On mobile devices, the effort to set up a wire transfer or direct debit is only maybe 1 minute for most users, and that's a one time thing, and unlike credit cards they don't expire either. Fees for the use of the system are effectively nil.
- ABS 5y ago
  likely because Visa is increasing their fees in UK since Brexit unshackled them from some EU caps
  - havkd 5y ago
    I like this. If that’s the case, it proves the free market works. You don’t need regulations when corporations can strongarm one another.
    - sorokod 5y ago
      Just like you don't need peace treaties between countries, they can just duke it out on the battlefield,
    - londons_explore 5y ago
      Most users either have a MasterCard or have a visa, and the majority of people couldn't get the other without substantial hassle. It would normally involve switching to a new bank, which in the UK is less frequent than divorces. That gives visa a lot of lock in - and the competition is no longer MasterCard but instead openbanking API's.
    - agilob 5y ago
      https://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2014/04/27/apple-google-intel-adobe-escape-cheaply-from-the-engineers-class-action-suit/?sh=16ef1d8d4847 https://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2014/04/27/apple-go... https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/17/technology/google-facebook-ad-deal-antitrust.html https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/17/technology/google-faceboo...
mission_failed 5y ago
Amazon Australia started charging fees to pay via Visa starting this month. No fees for Amex or mastercard.
- refurb 5y ago
  Not that it’s a big market but Amazon Singapore had also added a fee to visa transactions starting last month. I assume Amazon tried to leverage the tens of billions in purchases (across regions) to get a better fee structure from Visa and Visa said “no”. No different than Costco dropping their long-standing Amex agreement in favor of Visa in the US a fewer years back. “Kill the chickens to teach the monkeys” as they say in Singapore. Now other companies know Visa is willing to tell the likes of Amazon “no”. Lesser companies won’t even ask.
GoblinSlayer 5y ago
One liner article and still paywalled. --- Some customers received a notification from Amazon this week after making purchases, which said that "starting 19 January 2022, we will no longer accept Visa credit cards issued in the UK" due to the high fees charged by Visa to process the transactions
chinathrow 5y ago
I'd love to see a drill down of how exact the credit card scheme works regarding fees. Like who is paid what exactly by whom. Is this somewhere available?
- GoblinSlayer 5y ago
  Visa would lose face if they charged the end user with transaction fees, so the merchant pays it instead. Then the merchant delegates the transaction fee to the user, but thankfully nobody knows about that.
  - chinathrow 5y ago
    I think you left out a few steps who's getting their fat cut (issuer of the card, aquirer, merchang provider etc) but not sure how it exactly goes down.
    - GoblinSlayer 5y ago
      I suppose consumer to merchant payments are optimized and men in the middle can't get much, everything goes to Visa. Card to card transactions are less optimized and issuer might get a cut.
- mrep 5y ago
  patio11 has articles on it. I would recommend the "How credit cards make money" one: https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=kalzumeus.com https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=kalzumeus.com
  - chinathrow 5y ago
    Read that article, there is nothing on that, I would love to see real numbers.
Kaibeezy 5y ago
Has this been confirmed by Amazon? I received this notice and another one last week about my payment method expiring for one Amazon service but not any of the others on the same card. I couldn’t confirm that one either and it had the distinct whiff of phish about it.
- fredoralive 5y ago
  I've recieved an email from Amazon.co.uk about it as well. Although I can only go by the subject "Visa credit cards will not be accepted, starting 19 Jan, 2022". My email preferences on Amazon are set to text only, and the text only email has no useful content beyond my name and generic headers / footers.
  - amelius 5y ago
    When did you receive it?
    - fredoralive 5y ago
      09:15 GMT. Unlike what the report says, I haven't ordered anything from Amazon in the past week or so I don't think it's directly tied to a super recent purchase (although I probably used a Visa Credit card for whatever it was).
- 3guk 5y ago
  Yep, I had a direct email from Amazon this morning advising me that I could no longer use my Visa Credit card for orders. "Starting 19 January, 2022, we will unfortunately no longer accept Visa credit cards issued in the UK, due to the high fees Visa charges for processing credit card transactions. You can still use debit cards (including Visa debit cards) and non-Visa credit cards like Mastercard, Amex, and Eurocard to make purchases. Please update your default payment method now, or add one of these new, eligible payment methods if you do not have one."
pricechild 5y ago
Well that's annoying. My bank (Natwest) just recently sent me a letter to boast we're getting shiny new VISA credit cards to replace our existing Mastercards. (which aren't near expiry)
- 00deadbeef 5y ago
  That's weird because they're moving their debit cards from Visa to Mastercard
  - blitzar 5y ago
    I guess the kickback on the credit card fees is too good to pass up for Natwest.
PeterSm 5y ago
I'm not convinced that this is a genuine email. Maybe someone here can explore..
- fredoralive 5y ago
  Why wouldn't it be genuine? If you hacked Amazon's email system to send a mass email to customers, why send that? It's clearly some sort of negotiation ploy over fees.
- mattowen_uk 5y ago
  The BBC are running with it[1], so it's must be true. /s -- [1] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-59306200 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-59306200
5754797 5y ago
I love it when the power giants start smashing each other instead of the little guy, for once. No doubt they’ll work out a deal where the consumer pays more.
PeterSm 5y ago
Are you sure this isn't spam? I've received the email. It looks very suspicious to me...
- jackweirdy 5y ago
  There is coverage in other national media https://news.sky.com/story/amazon-to-reject-customer-payments-using-uk-issued-visa-credit-cards-12470641 https://news.sky.com/story/amazon-to-reject-customer-payment... But additionally I use the +servicename trick on Amazon, and the email was delivered to me at jack+amazon@myemail. If it’s phishing it’s incredibly well done as it came from the source to the recipients used by the source
ralferoo 5y ago
I've just found another link that isn't paywalled: https://www.reuters.com/business/retail-consumer/amazon-stop-accepting-visa-credit-cards-issued-uk-bloomberg-news-2021-11-17/ https://www.reuters.com/business/retail-consumer/amazon-stop... This says that only Visa credit cards will be blocked, not Visa debit cards. I have a speculative guess that it might not just be about the merchant cost... It does seem that Visa offers more customer protection than Mastercard from what I can tell, so perhaps too many customers have got Visa involved for refunds because of the many dubious Amazon marketplace sellers listing fake or substandard products.
- c12 5y ago
  If I had to guess this is fall out from the rate increase Visa put in place after Brexit. Now that they are no longer restricted by pro-consumer caps they hiked the rates from 0.3% to 1.5% on credit card payments: https://www.ft.com/content/4820b619-4d35-4c6a-8523-fc685c047374 https://www.ft.com/content/4820b619-4d35-4c6a-8523-fc685c047...
  - makomk 5y ago
    That's only for cross-border transactions between the EU and UK, and as the article says Mastercard is doing the same thing as well. I know there was a lot of speculation on social media that this was to blame but there's a lot of social media misinformation whenever someone finds a way to blame anything on Brexit... (Also, in practice people were getting ripped off by banks on the exchange rates for those cross-border transactiopns anyway. A lot of these EU measures require being part of the Euro to get the full benefit, and the UK isn't because we'd likely have gone the way of Italy and Greece if we joined.)
andycowley 5y ago
This was from March about Brexit-related interchange rates on Visa https://news.sky.com/story/visa-to-hike-interchange-fees-for-uk-customers-in-post-brexit-move-12247818 https://news.sky.com/story/visa-to-hike-interchange-fees-for...
- buro9 5y ago
  From the article: "The move to increase interchange fees will bring it into line with MasterCard, its rival payments group, which announced a similar move in January" So it seems that Visa rate trails the Mastercard one and they will be the same.
  - Liquid_Fire 5y ago
    Note that this only applies to UK payments to EU companies. It would not apply to almost any Amazon purchases as they are usually from Amazon UK.
bamboozled 5y ago
"Only Amazon is allowed to make way more money than anyone else"
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
helloguillecl 5y ago
It is mind blowing that in 2021 we have a payment system collecting a fairly big percentage of the economy's output. I don't know for sure, but 2% over revenue could easily be about what the government collects in corporate taxes derived from that revenue.
- Ekaros 5y ago
  2% sounds high, something under 1% sounds reasonable for unified network providing reasonably secure payment flow. Dealing with lot of cash isn't really free either. It gets quite complicated and less secure if sums were really to increase.
  - pishpash 5y ago
    2-3% sounds reasonable to bootstrap taking into account risk, but the question is why hasn't it gotten lower (and processors seem to want it to go higher) as technology has improved? Probably not enough competition and incentive to make improvements and pass on savings.
- username_my1 5y ago
  online payment transaction costs are huge, and completely unnecessary, and they will keep eating up on the value of the economy because they're a monopoly. at least all b2b transactions should move out of card payments, and hopefully with crepto or modern digital banks the b2c will follow, but right now too many banks are holding people's money and too many of them are consolidated / act as a cartel.
- viktorcode 5y ago
  In this case it's a consequence of Brexit. In European economic area those fees are capped pretty low.
  - danuker 5y ago
    How so? Did leaving EU imply giving up laws already adopted while in the EU?
azalemeth 5y ago
I really don't get why we accept this de-facto tax on the world economy by US companies. Amex, Visa and Mastercard are all based in the US, and all charge a (nowadays) non-negotiable fee on selling anything. Cash has many problems, and clearly won't work for online purchases, but at least small business owners could pay their employees "out of the till" at the end of the week, bypassing bank transaction fees and a fairly substantial (~1%) barely-negotiable and highly regressive charge on their income.
- IdoRA 5y ago
  Cash is not free to handle. Considering the whole “cash lifecycle”: shrinkage, cost of secure transport to the bank, &c., costs can be up to 8% for some industry sectors.
- tryptophan 5y ago
  I wonder what will happen when fedNow goes live. https://www.frbservices.org/financial-services/fednow/about.html https://www.frbservices.org/financial-services/fednow/about.... It will be a cheap/free, instant, money sending service. What will be the point of visa/mastercard/paypal then?
  - valzam 5y ago
    Australia has had instant, free interbank transfers for years now (PayID) but for some reason I have yet to see a business accept it at PoS and only very rarely for online purchases. The only business that seem to accept it are crypto and stock exchanges, to get your money in fast...
- viktorcode 5y ago
  That's dependent on a world region. It is a question to regulations in this area your country employs. Also, there are different payment systems (non US). It is up to sellers to support them.
- toyg 5y ago
  Bootstrapping a worldwide payment system is very, very expensive.
qalmakka 5y ago
VAT evasion is widespread in certain countries (like Italy for instance), and pushing people to prefer electronic payments to cash is empirically the only realistic way to counter it, but there will always be resistance from small retailers until payment fees are low enough. The availability of electronic payments should be universal, I personally hate being forced to constantly carry cash on myself at all times. In a cashless society, there's no point in mugging and robbing, because people don't have untraceable items of value on the at all times.
- jCalamari 5y ago
  > VAT evasion is widespread in certain countries (like Italy for instance), and pushing people to prefer electronic payments to cash is empirically the only realistic way to counter it The only realist way to counter it is to stop charging VAT. > In a cashless society, there's no point in mugging and robbing, because people don't have untraceable items of value on the at all times. Because all the valuable items are digital and hackers can steal your money without meeting you in person.
- mschuster91 5y ago
  On the other hand, shifting to electronic payments is building up an incredible surveillance mechanism. Let's just take an example of who is endangered... a 16 year old girl from a strictly religious family who had unprotected sex and needs Plan B. In a cash environment, she'll pay for it with her allowance, and her parents won't ever discover she had bought Plan B. In a cashless society, her parents can see the evidence by checking her bank account. Also, un(der)documented / "illegalized" people literally won't have a way to survive, as their access to bank accounts may be revoked or the government demand a live feed of all transactions, which means that e.g. the police can be dispatched to a supermarket where that person just bought food. IT (and politics) definitely needs ethics education, as all the tech bros and other hypers of "going cashless" never take into account who will be negatively affected by their ideas!
  - cesarb 5y ago
    > In a cash environment, she'll pay for it with her allowance, and her parents won't ever discover she had bought Plan B. In a cashless society, her parents can see the evidence by checking her bank account. Playing devil's advocate: that's only if the payment and the product are linked. When I buy something at a pharmacy with a credit or debit card, all that appears on the card together with the value is the name of the pharmacy. Looking at the bank account does not reveal whether the item I bought was toothpaste or chocolate (yes pharmacies also sell chocolate here).
buro9 5y ago
https://www.amazon.jobs/en-gb/principles https://www.amazon.jobs/en-gb/principles Right there at the top... Customer Obsession Leaders start with the customer and work backwards. They work vigorously to earn and keep customer trust. Although leaders pay attention to competitors, they obsess over customers. Nothing about this is customer obsession. This is Amazon throwing their weight around and putting customers in the firing line.
3guk 5y ago
Rather interestingly my bank (First Direct) in the UK swapped over from a Visa Debit card to a Mastercard recently - I wonder if perhaps there are things going on behind the scenes that consumers are not currently aware of. Rather annoyingly most of my spending with Amazon is on my Visa credit card - can't quite figure out why they are now more expensive to process than the historically expensive AMEX.
- MattPalmer1086 5y ago
  Same, but the credit card is still Visa. Not sure why they only switched the debit cards.
buro9 5y ago
Sooo.... if I have an Amazon account that is also an AWS account. I can pay with Visa on AWS, but not Amazon? And if I close the Amazon account, it will close the AWS account? I only really use AWS for S3, and if Cloudflare get R2 into my hands soon it does appear that Amazon will have finally done that which de-Amazons me... made it impossible to pay them. If the choice is "Change bank" or "Change shop"... one of these has far lower friction.
hmrr 5y ago
I wonder if this is why my bank (Santander) is switching everyone to Mastercard.
jbb67 5y ago
I have a visa credit card and received this email. I don't want to use my debit card with amazon particularly. You get a few added protections by purchasing with a credit card, and a mistake can't drain my current account in the same way as it could with a debit card, plus I get the benefits of a month or two credit for "free". If I'm "forced" to use my debit card, I'll have to for essential purchases but this means that I likely won't be buying much more from amazon in the immediate future where I can find an alternative.
- Jansen312 5y ago
  For everything else there is master card.
- machiaweliczny 5y ago
  > a mistake can't drain my current account in the same way as it could with a debit card In Poland credit cards aren't popular at all and you just have separate account for monthly expenses with card attached to this account. For me it works fine. Don't understand the need for credit cards (I guess it makes sense for people living paycheck-to-paycheck).
numair 5y ago
I would be interested to know if this has something to do with premium interchange. If it does, Amazon has basically just declared war on a bunch of fintechs’ no-/low-fee business models, where you get a ton of services and they get your interchange revenue. It’ll be interesting to see how that war plays out, if that’s what’s happened.
verisimi 5y ago
Like many here, I'm wondering where this will go. It could be a negotiation strategy with Visa or something like that. I can't help but wonder whether this is intended to fit into some sort of crypto currency (or govcoin) roll out.
InsomniacL 5y ago
Visa Revenue: US$21 billion (2020) Net income: US$10 billion (2020) Amazon Revenue: $425 billion (2020) Net income: US$21 billion (2020) It would seem the duopoly between Visa and Mastercard is very profitable, yet their fee's are constantly rising. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visa_Inc https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visa_Inc. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazon_(company) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazon_(company)
- 5754797 5y ago
  So Amazon should just buy visa and be done with it.
  - missedthecue 5y ago
    Visa is a $457B company
londons_explore 5y ago
Amazon sells Amazon branded Mastercards in the UK... Could be part of it...
mrkramer 5y ago
“We are very disappointed that Amazon is threatening to restrict consumer choice in the future. When consumer choice is limited, nobody wins,” a Visa spokesman said in an email. "When consumer choice is limited". Yea that's the problem, more competition is needed.
- tim333 5y ago
  As a consumer I'd prefer openness as to what the cards charge an ability to get a bit off if you use a cheaper one.
youngtaff 5y ago
There's a huge piece of information missing from that article and much of the reporting of Amazon's decision Visa have put up UK-EU interchange fees (as post Brexit they're not covered by the cap) But it affects Amazon because when you buy something from Amazon UK, you're billed by Amazon Luxembourg and Amazon UK then fulfil Amazon's tax avoidance strategy is part of the reason the charge has increased for them. If they billed from the UK it wouldn't affect them
- xeromal 5y ago
  Does that mean they just need to set up a billing center in the UK?
  - cromka 5y ago
    I laughed at your "just" :)
    - xeromal 5y ago
      Haha, for some reason, my Appalachian heritage likes to throw in just, just about anywhere.
      - MadeThisToReply 5y ago
        Do Appalachians say "just" a lot? I don't get it.
        xeromal 5y ago
        At least the region where I'm from, it's kind of a filler word like uhm
  - martin-adams 5y ago
    And report profits in the UK then I presume.
omar_alt 5y ago
Having a Mastercard and an Amex can be useful if you are dealing with some payment gateways that throw a fit at visa during checkout (Scottish whisky sites on Stripe payment gateways is a recurring theme). However this is completely impractical for many people especially those on low incomes who now consider Amazon a utility.
- Dah00n 5y ago
  Maybe the bank could offer a 2-in-1 card. Most Danish VISA cards can be used as both a VISA or a national payment card (which is without transaction fee by law). Most shops offer payment via both.
ilaksh 5y ago
Amazingly one mention of cryptocurrency on the whole page o comments. Cryptocurrency will put Visa out of business. Both for debit and credit.
LatteLazy 5y ago
This seems like one of those "who blinks first" negotiating strategies between big businesses.
PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
Given that Amazon offers its own Visa card in the USA, I wonder how this sort of behavior affects their relationship with Visa Inc. ?
dandare 5y ago
A) how much are the transaction fees in yhe first place? B) I remember being charged an extra buck when I choose a credit card as my payment method. Why couldn't retailers just do this?
rahimnathwani 5y ago
Here are the relevant interchange fees for consumer credit cards (for card-not-present transactions): - [0] Both customer and merchant in EEA: 0.3% - [1] Customer in UK, merchant in EEA: 1.5% - [2] Customer in UK, merchant in UK: 0.3% What's weird, though, is that the interchange for UK-issued debit cards used at an EEA merchant is also high (1.15%). [0] https://www.visa.co.uk/dam/VCOM/regional/ve/unitedkingdom/PDF/fees-and-interchange/intra-eea-interchange-october-2021.pdf https://www.visa.co.uk/dam/VCOM/regional/ve/unitedkingdom/PD... [1] https://www.visa.co.uk/dam/VCOM/regional/ve/unitedkingdom/PDF/fees-and-interchange/inter-eea-interchange-jun-2021.pdf https://www.visa.co.uk/dam/VCOM/regional/ve/unitedkingdom/PD... [2] https://www.visa.co.uk/dam/VCOM/regional/ve/unitedkingdom/PDF/fees-and-interchange/2020-may/uk-may-2020.pdf https://www.visa.co.uk/dam/VCOM/regional/ve/unitedkingdom/PD...

294 points by barrkel 5y ago

UK Amex procesing fees are outragious compared to UK Visa processing fees. This does not make much logical sense to me.

Is it possible to feel sorry for neither of these parties? Visa sucks for raising interchange rates and Amazon sucks for blocking customers who have those cards. The customer ends up suffering since Visa will still make their revenues and Amazon doesn't care since customers will find a means to pay. All these increasing fees definitely is a sign of pending high inflation world-wide, however. We know who stands to lose from not only the higher fees but also inflation, the typical consumer.

ChrisRR 5y ago

Well that's annoying. Visa credit cards are very common in the UK, I myself use one for everything online. I don't know anyone who's got an American Express card in the UK Edit: Could it also be that Amazon offer their own Mastercard credit card and they're trying to nudge people towards that?

em10fan 5y ago
They aren't that common. Only 2 of the high street banks offer them, and one is moving away from them. The rest are all Mastercard.
- DharmaPolice 5y ago
  Barclaycard was the most popular credit card in the UK at one point and they have ten million customers. As far as I know, they only offer visa credit cards.
Kiro 5y ago
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29250661 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29250661 is saying the opposite so what is it?
- fredoralive 5y ago
  Presumably confusion between debit (where Visa is common) and credit (where it isn't).
  - IanCal 5y ago
    HSBC credit cards were visa. I assume they'll change as first direct has.
    - ealexhudson 5y ago
      I got a new HSBC credit card just the other day - still Visa. If they're planning to change, they're taking their sweet time about it...
  - ChrisRR 5y ago
    HSBC and barclaycard are both Visa credit cards. Not sure about the rest
aigo 5y ago
Fun fact: At M&S, 12% of payments taken online for delivery to London addresses are paid by Amex. The rest of the country? <3%.
- 00deadbeef 5y ago
  Any idea why Amex would be so popular in London? I'd never even consider an Amex card due to my perception of it being something that many places won't even accept.
  - lmm 5y ago
    Amex is positioned as a premium card for high earners, who mostly live in London.
  - hocuspocus 5y ago
    My guess: Lots of business meetings in London -> merchants need to accept Amex company cards -> people realize acceptance is high -> people look into Amex for their personal usage, for instance to enjoy higher rewards.
  - dazc 5y ago
    Status symbol?
    - billyruffian 5y ago
      I had my wallet nicked in Padstow on the last day of a trip there and was just about take the 3.5 hour drive home. Problem was I didn't have enough fuel to make it. My CC providers took ages to even answer the phone and cancel the cards. Amex dealt with it a just a few mins, arranged to courier a replacement card to me by the next day and authorised a fuelling stop for me on my way home. I'll never be without one, ever.
      - dazc 5y ago
        Fair point, I wasn't aware of this feature.
agilob 5y ago
I never knew Visa even has credit cards, only knew about MC and I know plenty of people who use Amex for everyday shopping. It's my default for pretty much ALL online payments, even grocery deliveries.
docdeek 5y ago
Not sure about the UK but here in France Amazon has just started promoting a co-branded Amazon Amex card.
- Semaphor 5y ago
  Those have existed in Germany for a long time. I got one, but canceled it after using up the 50€ they gave me because the banking interface of their partner was atrocious.
- mytailorisrich 5y ago
  In the UK Amazon has had a co-branded Mastercard credit card for at least a decade.

bellyfullofbac 5y ago

The HN headline doesn't fit the article. UK issued Visa cards != Amazon UK, and it says Amazon.com, not Amazon UK. For example Revolut is available in a lot of countries, they're UK-based, and I'm guessing the cards are UK-issued since a lot of merchants think it's a GBP card (and they conveniently ask if they should do the currency conversion (and conveniently don't tell you their conversion rate is much higher and profits them)).

barrkel 5y ago
I updated it.

TekMol 5y ago

How much does Visa charge when someone pays, say, $100 to Amazon via a credit card? And if that is a substantial amount - how will the Lightning Network not drive Visa out of business?

mjul 5y ago
You are probably thinking about the interchange fees. [1] https://www.visa.co.uk/about-visa/visa-in-europe/fees-and-interchange.html https://www.visa.co.uk/about-visa/visa-in-europe/fees-and-in...

ashergill 5y ago

https://archive.md/n2PU8 https://archive.md/n2PU8

aembleton 5y ago
or https://www.bbc.com/news/business-59306200 https://www.bbc.com/news/business-59306200

barrkel 5y ago

I cannot believe that Visa transaction overhead would be higher than Amex - there's something going on behind the scenes here. I don't think this is the end of it either, it smells like a negotiation threat. Visa have a larger market share overall (80%, including debit cards [1]) but Mastercard leads in credit cards. Amex has always been fairly niche because it's not accepted everywhere. [1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/1116580/payment-card-scheme-market-share-in-europe-by-country/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/1116580/payment-card-sch... > Visa was the largest card issuer in Ireland and the United Kingdom, with market shares of over 80 percent in both countries. (from 2019) Reading further it does look like most Visa cards are debit cards and Mastercard has the lead in credit cards. PS: Comment updated after some research.

mutatio 5y ago
For my personal data point, 1 of 7 cards is Visa, the rest are Mastercard.
rbanffy 5y ago
> I cannot believe that Visa transaction overhead would be higher than Amex - there's something going on behind the scenes here. I would be willing to bet the fees Amazon gets are vastly different from the fees a small merchant has to endure. They obviously tried to squeeze a little bit more and now they’ll leave it to the shareholders to pressure the company to accept whatever Bezos wants.
uzakov 5y ago
I think situation in 2021 is very different in London: AMEX is accepted nearly everywhere in central London (Even on markets etc), there are ofc some shops that don't take it but generally AMEX is widely accepted. Re: Mastercard It seems that Mastercard is more widespread among "hot" banking startups, ie I can create virtual debit Mastercards on Revolut and Monzo
- blowski 5y ago
  I'd like to see some stats on that. My own experience is much closer to that of the OP.

ZeroGravitas 5y ago

Has anyone successfully nationalised/regulated into sanity this business? It's 2021, buying stuff should involve neither precious metals nor weird faceless financial cooperatives owned by private banks.

Mayzie 5y ago
Pretty much all Australian & New Zealand cards use a system called EFTPOS[1] in addition to Visa / MasterCard credit since the 80s. Fees are virtually nil, and payments are instant. They cannot be used for online purchases though, I believe. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EFTPOS#Australia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EFTPOS#Australia
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
gota 5y ago
See this comment - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29250582&p=2#29251838 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29250582&p=2#29251838 Brazil has a pretty successful system in place. The only reason I still use credit cards anymore are aggressive cashback policies. For everything I can do with PIX I'm more than likely to choose it nowadays.
larschdk 5y ago
Denmark has a standardized national debit card. Physical stores are not allowed to charge a fee, but online stores are (typically DKK1.50/$0.25). Works great, but obviously only for stores in Denmark. They are almost always combined with a Visa debit card on the same card for a yearly fee (typically DKK150/$25).
- rightbyte 5y ago
  Really? Nice. There is no need to have Visa et al. take a 1-3% tax on everything.
  - blowfish721 5y ago

londons_explore 5y ago

If this is a negotiation tactic, why is it not a global proposal? Perhaps because bank transfer is very developed in the UK, and wire transfers could totally replace credit cards, with lower fees? On mobile devices, the effort to set up a wire transfer or direct debit is only maybe 1 minute for most users, and that's a one time thing, and unlike credit cards they don't expire either. Fees for the use of the system are effectively nil.

ABS 5y ago
likely because Visa is increasing their fees in UK since Brexit unshackled them from some EU caps
- havkd 5y ago
  I like this. If that’s the case, it proves the free market works. You don’t need regulations when corporations can strongarm one another.
  - sorokod 5y ago
    Just like you don't need peace treaties between countries, they can just duke it out on the battlefield,
  - londons_explore 5y ago
    Most users either have a MasterCard or have a visa, and the majority of people couldn't get the other without substantial hassle. It would normally involve switching to a new bank, which in the UK is less frequent than divorces. That gives visa a lot of lock in - and the competition is no longer MasterCard but instead openbanking API's.
  - agilob 5y ago
    https://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2014/04/27/apple-google-intel-adobe-escape-cheaply-from-the-engineers-class-action-suit/?sh=16ef1d8d4847 https://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2014/04/27/apple-go... https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/17/technology/google-facebook-ad-deal-antitrust.html https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/17/technology/google-faceboo...

mission_failed 5y ago

Amazon Australia started charging fees to pay via Visa starting this month. No fees for Amex or mastercard.

refurb 5y ago
Not that it’s a big market but Amazon Singapore had also added a fee to visa transactions starting last month. I assume Amazon tried to leverage the tens of billions in purchases (across regions) to get a better fee structure from Visa and Visa said “no”. No different than Costco dropping their long-standing Amex agreement in favor of Visa in the US a fewer years back. “Kill the chickens to teach the monkeys” as they say in Singapore. Now other companies know Visa is willing to tell the likes of Amazon “no”. Lesser companies won’t even ask.

GoblinSlayer 5y ago

One liner article and still paywalled. --- Some customers received a notification from Amazon this week after making purchases, which said that "starting 19 January 2022, we will no longer accept Visa credit cards issued in the UK" due to the high fees charged by Visa to process the transactions

chinathrow 5y ago

I'd love to see a drill down of how exact the credit card scheme works regarding fees. Like who is paid what exactly by whom. Is this somewhere available?

GoblinSlayer 5y ago
Visa would lose face if they charged the end user with transaction fees, so the merchant pays it instead. Then the merchant delegates the transaction fee to the user, but thankfully nobody knows about that.
- chinathrow 5y ago
  I think you left out a few steps who's getting their fat cut (issuer of the card, aquirer, merchang provider etc) but not sure how it exactly goes down.
  - GoblinSlayer 5y ago
    I suppose consumer to merchant payments are optimized and men in the middle can't get much, everything goes to Visa. Card to card transactions are less optimized and issuer might get a cut.
mrep 5y ago
patio11 has articles on it. I would recommend the "How credit cards make money" one: https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=kalzumeus.com https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=kalzumeus.com
- chinathrow 5y ago
  Read that article, there is nothing on that, I would love to see real numbers.

Kaibeezy 5y ago

Has this been confirmed by Amazon? I received this notice and another one last week about my payment method expiring for one Amazon service but not any of the others on the same card. I couldn’t confirm that one either and it had the distinct whiff of phish about it.

fredoralive 5y ago
I've recieved an email from Amazon.co.uk about it as well. Although I can only go by the subject "Visa credit cards will not be accepted, starting 19 Jan, 2022". My email preferences on Amazon are set to text only, and the text only email has no useful content beyond my name and generic headers / footers.
- amelius 5y ago
  When did you receive it?
  - fredoralive 5y ago
    09:15 GMT. Unlike what the report says, I haven't ordered anything from Amazon in the past week or so I don't think it's directly tied to a super recent purchase (although I probably used a Visa Credit card for whatever it was).
3guk 5y ago
Yep, I had a direct email from Amazon this morning advising me that I could no longer use my Visa Credit card for orders. "Starting 19 January, 2022, we will unfortunately no longer accept Visa credit cards issued in the UK, due to the high fees Visa charges for processing credit card transactions. You can still use debit cards (including Visa debit cards) and non-Visa credit cards like Mastercard, Amex, and Eurocard to make purchases. Please update your default payment method now, or add one of these new, eligible payment methods if you do not have one."

pricechild 5y ago

Well that's annoying. My bank (Natwest) just recently sent me a letter to boast we're getting shiny new VISA credit cards to replace our existing Mastercards. (which aren't near expiry)

00deadbeef 5y ago
That's weird because they're moving their debit cards from Visa to Mastercard
- blitzar 5y ago
  I guess the kickback on the credit card fees is too good to pass up for Natwest.

PeterSm 5y ago

I'm not convinced that this is a genuine email. Maybe someone here can explore..

fredoralive 5y ago
Why wouldn't it be genuine? If you hacked Amazon's email system to send a mass email to customers, why send that? It's clearly some sort of negotiation ploy over fees.
mattowen_uk 5y ago
The BBC are running with it[1], so it's must be true. /s -- [1] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-59306200 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-59306200

5754797 5y ago

I love it when the power giants start smashing each other instead of the little guy, for once. No doubt they’ll work out a deal where the consumer pays more.

PeterSm 5y ago

Are you sure this isn't spam? I've received the email. It looks very suspicious to me...

jackweirdy 5y ago
There is coverage in other national media https://news.sky.com/story/amazon-to-reject-customer-payments-using-uk-issued-visa-credit-cards-12470641 https://news.sky.com/story/amazon-to-reject-customer-payment... But additionally I use the +servicename trick on Amazon, and the email was delivered to me at jack+amazon@myemail. If it’s phishing it’s incredibly well done as it came from the source to the recipients used by the source

ralferoo 5y ago

I've just found another link that isn't paywalled: https://www.reuters.com/business/retail-consumer/amazon-stop-accepting-visa-credit-cards-issued-uk-bloomberg-news-2021-11-17/ https://www.reuters.com/business/retail-consumer/amazon-stop... This says that only Visa credit cards will be blocked, not Visa debit cards. I have a speculative guess that it might not just be about the merchant cost... It does seem that Visa offers more customer protection than Mastercard from what I can tell, so perhaps too many customers have got Visa involved for refunds because of the many dubious Amazon marketplace sellers listing fake or substandard products.

c12 5y ago
If I had to guess this is fall out from the rate increase Visa put in place after Brexit. Now that they are no longer restricted by pro-consumer caps they hiked the rates from 0.3% to 1.5% on credit card payments: https://www.ft.com/content/4820b619-4d35-4c6a-8523-fc685c047374 https://www.ft.com/content/4820b619-4d35-4c6a-8523-fc685c047...
- makomk 5y ago
  That's only for cross-border transactions between the EU and UK, and as the article says Mastercard is doing the same thing as well. I know there was a lot of speculation on social media that this was to blame but there's a lot of social media misinformation whenever someone finds a way to blame anything on Brexit... (Also, in practice people were getting ripped off by banks on the exchange rates for those cross-border transactiopns anyway. A lot of these EU measures require being part of the Euro to get the full benefit, and the UK isn't because we'd likely have gone the way of Italy and Greece if we joined.)

andycowley 5y ago

This was from March about Brexit-related interchange rates on Visa https://news.sky.com/story/visa-to-hike-interchange-fees-for-uk-customers-in-post-brexit-move-12247818 https://news.sky.com/story/visa-to-hike-interchange-fees-for...

buro9 5y ago
From the article: "The move to increase interchange fees will bring it into line with MasterCard, its rival payments group, which announced a similar move in January" So it seems that Visa rate trails the Mastercard one and they will be the same.
- Liquid_Fire 5y ago
  Note that this only applies to UK payments to EU companies. It would not apply to almost any Amazon purchases as they are usually from Amazon UK.

bamboozled 5y ago

"Only Amazon is allowed to make way more money than anyone else"

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

helloguillecl 5y ago

It is mind blowing that in 2021 we have a payment system collecting a fairly big percentage of the economy's output. I don't know for sure, but 2% over revenue could easily be about what the government collects in corporate taxes derived from that revenue.

Ekaros 5y ago
2% sounds high, something under 1% sounds reasonable for unified network providing reasonably secure payment flow. Dealing with lot of cash isn't really free either. It gets quite complicated and less secure if sums were really to increase.
- pishpash 5y ago
  2-3% sounds reasonable to bootstrap taking into account risk, but the question is why hasn't it gotten lower (and processors seem to want it to go higher) as technology has improved? Probably not enough competition and incentive to make improvements and pass on savings.
username_my1 5y ago
online payment transaction costs are huge, and completely unnecessary, and they will keep eating up on the value of the economy because they're a monopoly. at least all b2b transactions should move out of card payments, and hopefully with crepto or modern digital banks the b2c will follow, but right now too many banks are holding people's money and too many of them are consolidated / act as a cartel.
viktorcode 5y ago
In this case it's a consequence of Brexit. In European economic area those fees are capped pretty low.
- danuker 5y ago
  How so? Did leaving EU imply giving up laws already adopted while in the EU?

azalemeth 5y ago

I really don't get why we accept this de-facto tax on the world economy by US companies. Amex, Visa and Mastercard are all based in the US, and all charge a (nowadays) non-negotiable fee on selling anything. Cash has many problems, and clearly won't work for online purchases, but at least small business owners could pay their employees "out of the till" at the end of the week, bypassing bank transaction fees and a fairly substantial (~1%) barely-negotiable and highly regressive charge on their income.

IdoRA 5y ago
Cash is not free to handle. Considering the whole “cash lifecycle”: shrinkage, cost of secure transport to the bank, &c., costs can be up to 8% for some industry sectors.
tryptophan 5y ago
I wonder what will happen when fedNow goes live. https://www.frbservices.org/financial-services/fednow/about.html https://www.frbservices.org/financial-services/fednow/about.... It will be a cheap/free, instant, money sending service. What will be the point of visa/mastercard/paypal then?
- valzam 5y ago
  Australia has had instant, free interbank transfers for years now (PayID) but for some reason I have yet to see a business accept it at PoS and only very rarely for online purchases. The only business that seem to accept it are crypto and stock exchanges, to get your money in fast...
viktorcode 5y ago
That's dependent on a world region. It is a question to regulations in this area your country employs. Also, there are different payment systems (non US). It is up to sellers to support them.
toyg 5y ago
Bootstrapping a worldwide payment system is very, very expensive.

qalmakka 5y ago

VAT evasion is widespread in certain countries (like Italy for instance), and pushing people to prefer electronic payments to cash is empirically the only realistic way to counter it, but there will always be resistance from small retailers until payment fees are low enough. The availability of electronic payments should be universal, I personally hate being forced to constantly carry cash on myself at all times. In a cashless society, there's no point in mugging and robbing, because people don't have untraceable items of value on the at all times.

jCalamari 5y ago
> VAT evasion is widespread in certain countries (like Italy for instance), and pushing people to prefer electronic payments to cash is empirically the only realistic way to counter it The only realist way to counter it is to stop charging VAT. > In a cashless society, there's no point in mugging and robbing, because people don't have untraceable items of value on the at all times. Because all the valuable items are digital and hackers can steal your money without meeting you in person.
mschuster91 5y ago
On the other hand, shifting to electronic payments is building up an incredible surveillance mechanism. Let's just take an example of who is endangered... a 16 year old girl from a strictly religious family who had unprotected sex and needs Plan B. In a cash environment, she'll pay for it with her allowance, and her parents won't ever discover she had bought Plan B. In a cashless society, her parents can see the evidence by checking her bank account. Also, un(der)documented / "illegalized" people literally won't have a way to survive, as their access to bank accounts may be revoked or the government demand a live feed of all transactions, which means that e.g. the police can be dispatched to a supermarket where that person just bought food. IT (and politics) definitely needs ethics education, as all the tech bros and other hypers of "going cashless" never take into account who will be negatively affected by their ideas!
- cesarb 5y ago
  > In a cash environment, she'll pay for it with her allowance, and her parents won't ever discover she had bought Plan B. In a cashless society, her parents can see the evidence by checking her bank account. Playing devil's advocate: that's only if the payment and the product are linked. When I buy something at a pharmacy with a credit or debit card, all that appears on the card together with the value is the name of the pharmacy. Looking at the bank account does not reveal whether the item I bought was toothpaste or chocolate (yes pharmacies also sell chocolate here).

buro9 5y ago

https://www.amazon.jobs/en-gb/principles https://www.amazon.jobs/en-gb/principles Right there at the top... Customer Obsession Leaders start with the customer and work backwards. They work vigorously to earn and keep customer trust. Although leaders pay attention to competitors, they obsess over customers. Nothing about this is customer obsession. This is Amazon throwing their weight around and putting customers in the firing line.

3guk 5y ago

Rather interestingly my bank (First Direct) in the UK swapped over from a Visa Debit card to a Mastercard recently - I wonder if perhaps there are things going on behind the scenes that consumers are not currently aware of. Rather annoyingly most of my spending with Amazon is on my Visa credit card - can't quite figure out why they are now more expensive to process than the historically expensive AMEX.

MattPalmer1086 5y ago
Same, but the credit card is still Visa. Not sure why they only switched the debit cards.

buro9 5y ago

Sooo.... if I have an Amazon account that is also an AWS account. I can pay with Visa on AWS, but not Amazon? And if I close the Amazon account, it will close the AWS account? I only really use AWS for S3, and if Cloudflare get R2 into my hands soon it does appear that Amazon will have finally done that which de-Amazons me... made it impossible to pay them. If the choice is "Change bank" or "Change shop"... one of these has far lower friction.

hmrr 5y ago

I wonder if this is why my bank (Santander) is switching everyone to Mastercard.

jbb67 5y ago

I have a visa credit card and received this email. I don't want to use my debit card with amazon particularly. You get a few added protections by purchasing with a credit card, and a mistake can't drain my current account in the same way as it could with a debit card, plus I get the benefits of a month or two credit for "free". If I'm "forced" to use my debit card, I'll have to for essential purchases but this means that I likely won't be buying much more from amazon in the immediate future where I can find an alternative.

Jansen312 5y ago
For everything else there is master card.
machiaweliczny 5y ago
> a mistake can't drain my current account in the same way as it could with a debit card In Poland credit cards aren't popular at all and you just have separate account for monthly expenses with card attached to this account. For me it works fine. Don't understand the need for credit cards (I guess it makes sense for people living paycheck-to-paycheck).

numair 5y ago

I would be interested to know if this has something to do with premium interchange. If it does, Amazon has basically just declared war on a bunch of fintechs’ no-/low-fee business models, where you get a ton of services and they get your interchange revenue. It’ll be interesting to see how that war plays out, if that’s what’s happened.

verisimi 5y ago

Like many here, I'm wondering where this will go. It could be a negotiation strategy with Visa or something like that. I can't help but wonder whether this is intended to fit into some sort of crypto currency (or govcoin) roll out.

InsomniacL 5y ago

Visa Revenue: US$21 billion (2020) Net income: US$10 billion (2020) Amazon Revenue: $425 billion (2020) Net income: US$21 billion (2020) It would seem the duopoly between Visa and Mastercard is very profitable, yet their fee's are constantly rising. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visa_Inc https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visa_Inc. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazon_(company) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazon_(company)

5754797 5y ago
So Amazon should just buy visa and be done with it.
- missedthecue 5y ago
  Visa is a $457B company

londons_explore 5y ago

Amazon sells Amazon branded Mastercards in the UK... Could be part of it...

mrkramer 5y ago

“We are very disappointed that Amazon is threatening to restrict consumer choice in the future. When consumer choice is limited, nobody wins,” a Visa spokesman said in an email. "When consumer choice is limited". Yea that's the problem, more competition is needed.

tim333 5y ago
As a consumer I'd prefer openness as to what the cards charge an ability to get a bit off if you use a cheaper one.

youngtaff 5y ago

There's a huge piece of information missing from that article and much of the reporting of Amazon's decision Visa have put up UK-EU interchange fees (as post Brexit they're not covered by the cap) But it affects Amazon because when you buy something from Amazon UK, you're billed by Amazon Luxembourg and Amazon UK then fulfil Amazon's tax avoidance strategy is part of the reason the charge has increased for them. If they billed from the UK it wouldn't affect them

xeromal 5y ago
Does that mean they just need to set up a billing center in the UK?
- cromka 5y ago
  I laughed at your "just" :)
  - xeromal 5y ago
    Haha, for some reason, my Appalachian heritage likes to throw in just, just about anywhere.
    - MadeThisToReply 5y ago
      Do Appalachians say "just" a lot? I don't get it.
      - xeromal 5y ago
        At least the region where I'm from, it's kind of a filler word like uhm
- martin-adams 5y ago
  And report profits in the UK then I presume.

omar_alt 5y ago

Having a Mastercard and an Amex can be useful if you are dealing with some payment gateways that throw a fit at visa during checkout (Scottish whisky sites on Stripe payment gateways is a recurring theme). However this is completely impractical for many people especially those on low incomes who now consider Amazon a utility.

Dah00n 5y ago
Maybe the bank could offer a 2-in-1 card. Most Danish VISA cards can be used as both a VISA or a national payment card (which is without transaction fee by law). Most shops offer payment via both.

ilaksh 5y ago

Amazingly one mention of cryptocurrency on the whole page o comments. Cryptocurrency will put Visa out of business. Both for debit and credit.

LatteLazy 5y ago

This seems like one of those "who blinks first" negotiating strategies between big businesses.

PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago

Given that Amazon offers its own Visa card in the USA, I wonder how this sort of behavior affects their relationship with Visa Inc. ?

dandare 5y ago

A) how much are the transaction fees in yhe first place? B) I remember being charged an extra buck when I choose a credit card as my payment method. Why couldn't retailers just do this?

rahimnathwani 5y ago

Here are the relevant interchange fees for consumer credit cards (for card-not-present transactions): - [0] Both customer and merchant in EEA: 0.3% - [1] Customer in UK, merchant in EEA: 1.5% - [2] Customer in UK, merchant in UK: 0.3% What's weird, though, is that the interchange for UK-issued debit cards used at an EEA merchant is also high (1.15%). [0] https://www.visa.co.uk/dam/VCOM/regional/ve/unitedkingdom/PDF/fees-and-interchange/intra-eea-interchange-october-2021.pdf https://www.visa.co.uk/dam/VCOM/regional/ve/unitedkingdom/PD... [1] https://www.visa.co.uk/dam/VCOM/regional/ve/unitedkingdom/PDF/fees-and-interchange/inter-eea-interchange-jun-2021.pdf https://www.visa.co.uk/dam/VCOM/regional/ve/unitedkingdom/PD... [2] https://www.visa.co.uk/dam/VCOM/regional/ve/unitedkingdom/PDF/fees-and-interchange/2020-may/uk-may-2020.pdf https://www.visa.co.uk/dam/VCOM/regional/ve/unitedkingdom/PD...