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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 B
by 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 agoDoes that mean they just need to set up a billing center in the UK?
- cromka 5y agoI laughed at your "just" :)
- xeromal 5y agoHaha, for some reason, my Appalachian heritage likes to throw in just, just about anywhere.
- MadeThisToReply 5y agoDo Appalachians say "just" a lot? I don't get it.
- xeromal 5y agoAt least the region where I'm from, it's kind of a filler word like uhm
- martin-adams 5y agoAnd report profits in the UK then I presume.
- tim333 5y agoThey may have to anyway. There is UK legislation restricting foreign companies trading directly in the UK which I guess wouldn't have applied to the EU pre brexit but would now.
- youngtaff 5y agoIn theory yes but then the sales are attributed to the UK company so it would affect their tax avoidance strategy
- martin-adams 5y agoIs that the case for non-digital goods? When I look at my credit card statement, all the Amazon transactions go to Great Britain.
- youngtaff 5y agoBut when you look at your Amazon order emails I bet it says "Sold by Amazon EU S.a.r.L." for stuff that comes directly from Amazon
- PeterisP 5y agoBrexit is the gift that keeps on giving!
- stronglikedan 5y agoThe path to the better destination is sometimes the bumpier path.
- bildung 5y agoIf the path keeps being bumpy you probably took a wrong turn.
- wayoutthere 5y agoI don’t know what power or leverage a country of 65 million thinks it has over the world. Companies / trading partners can simply ignore the UK now with few consequences. The UK has been on a long, slow decline of global relevance since the Victorian era. I don’t know why that would stop with Brexit.
- nicky0 5y agoThe point is it's now just another country on an equal footing with the rest. Unlike the EU members which have to ask the Commission for permission to scratch their ass.
- wayoutthere 5y agoBut they’re not on equal footing with the global superpowers — the EU has significant leverage by representing nearly a billion people. The UK had an outsized voice in EU politics, where now it’s just a small fish in an ocean of sharks. The UK is basically Mexico now. You saw how well their trade negotiations with the EU went; expect the US and China to walk all over them too.
- throwaway2037 5y ago
- rexreed 5y agoMore detail here: 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... But a curious note from that 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 why is Amazon restricting customers with Visa and not MasterCard? Can't be the UK-EU Post-Brexit policy alone.
- rtpg 5y agoMaybe Mastercard made a deal with Amazon and Visa isn’t budging
- ComputerGuru 5y agoThe Amazon branded credit card is a MasterCard in the UK. So Visa raises its rates to match MC, but AMZ has a special relationship with the latter.
- simfree 5y agoNote that this special relationship only likely applies to transactions that use the Amazon MasterCard on Amazon.com, and MasterCards issued by other companies still impose full rates. Costco ran into this with American Express, though in retrospect the move to Visa seems like a worse move (more non-Costco Visa cards in circulation).
- diebeforei485 5y ago
- red_trumpet 5y agoAccording to the BBC article[1], Mastercard also raised a fee for UK-EU transactions. But Mastercard has no problem here? [1] https://www.bbc.com/news/business-59306200 https://www.bbc.com/news/business-59306200
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- Fnoord 5y agoDoes this mean the reverse is also true? Unilever, Shell, and Blizzard went UK instead of FR/NL. There's more companies which switched UK to EU than EU to UK, but still.