7 ms·

Amazon UK and Visa credit card reach a deal

66 points by Kaibeezy 5y ago

Email from Amazon UK this morning: The expected change regarding the use of Visa credit cards on Amazon.co.uk will no longer take place on January 19. We are working closely with Visa on a potential solution that will enable customers to continue using their Visa credit cards on Amazon.co.uk. Should we make any changes related to Visa credit cards, we will give you advance notice. Until then, you can continue to use Visa credit cards, debit cards, Mastercard, American Express, and Eurocard as you do today. Thank you for being an Amazon customer.

themihai 5y ago
It would be nice to see a Union of merchants. I'm pretty sure Amazon got a sweat deal given its power but the poor small merchant pays the full fee price.
- chmod775 5y ago
  Isn't it the norm for smaller stores to pass the cost onto the consumer? That's in effect just as good. Visa doesn't want to be seen as "the card it's expensive to buy stuff with".
  - yardstick 5y ago
    In many countries it’s illegal for merchants to charge differently based on payment method. So ironically you are better off using Amex or some high fee card with rewards because the merchant has to factor it into the sticker price.
    - dannyw 5y ago
      In many countries being the USA, whose Supreme Court deemed it anti-competitive for courts to strike down Visa/Mastercard/AmEx's clause that makes it illegal for merchants to pass along processing costs to consumers.
      - lillecarl 5y ago
        Same in Sweden, no card charges here. They used to decline card purchases on smaller amounts, but I don't see that anywhere anymore either. Our credit card rewards are absolutely terrible in comparison to the US though.
        School-Cotton 5y ago
        Interesting. A minimum purchase of $10 or $15 for credit cards is still common at bars and small, independently-owned stores in the US.
        lillecarl 5y ago
        I was at the grocery store the other day to pick up a package, bought an energy drink for 8 SEK (<1$). In a convenience store prices are just higher to cover fees. (I guess) I haven't paid for a beer with cash since I came home from a trip to Indonesia & Australia ~3 years ago. A normal bar-beer would set you back between 30 and 90 SEK (commonly 65) in Sweden, exchange rate is about 1$ to 9 SEK.
      - bb123 5y ago
        Also the UK
      - hdjjhhvvhga 5y ago
        Fortunately, there are countries where it's not the case. When you think about it for a moment, it's extremely clear how unfair this clause is for everybody except credit card companies.
        vinay427 5y ago
        Honestly, I prefer it as a consumer. In the US, one can relatively easily find a card that gets 2% back on every transaction, if not more, with 3-7% not uncommon for certain spending. Even at 1-2% back, most of the price increase by a merchant is recouped, and some nominal extra amount is perfectly acceptable to me for the convenience. Cash isn't free to accept either for most merchants, given the security risks, so I can't imagine I'd be saving much (if anything) if different prices were allowed for cash transactions.
    - rswail 5y ago
      In Australia, the merchant surcharges are allowed, but not more than the cost to the business, with the regulator (ACCC) paying a lot of attention to that. Most small operators will have a 1-2% surcharge for credit cards and Amex sometimes either not accepted or higher. https://www.accc.gov.au/consumers/prices-surcharges-receipts/credit-debit-prepaid-card-surcharges https://www.accc.gov.au/consumers/prices-surcharges-receipts...
  - bayindirh 5y ago
    All stores pass the cost onto the consumer. It's in the price. Having to pay the full price limit smaller stores' power to compete on price with the bigger ones.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
  - IshKebab 5y ago
    That doesn't mean small merchants are unaffected by the higher prices they have to charge. They still have to charge higher prices, which means less profit.
    - teamonkey 5y ago
      They also pay a higher rate of tax than Amazon
  - mihaaly 5y ago
    "Isn't it the norm for smaller stores to pass the cost onto the consumer?" ...and sell for more than the big ones, loosing cutomers? Yes. This is what would be nice to be avoided.
  - azalemeth 5y ago
    The trouble is that Visa/Mastercard/Amex are all american corporations who have effectively extracted a ~1% tax on a large proportion of every in-person non-cash monetary transaction worldwide. That's a huge amount of power for an unelected, unaccountable organisation to have, and one that returns money to its american shareowners and employees only. Exactly how the tax is collected is a matter for the businesses to hide. I don't like it one bit, but there's nothing I can do about it.
    - Youden 5y ago
      Maybe you simply intended your comment as hyperbole but if not: - It's not a 1% tax worldwide. For example most of Europe uses debit cards instead of credit and the fees are regulated to be much lower than 1%. This also demonstrates that Visa's power is not unchecked. - Visa may be listed on American exchanges but foreign nationals can buy shares no problems. On the percentage, I was curious and had a look at Visa's financials [0]. On payment volume of $10.4T, they reported revenue of $24.1B, so they get about 0.2% overall. [0]: https://annualreport.visa.com/financials/default.aspx https://annualreport.visa.com/financials/default.aspx
      - ricardobeat 5y ago
        I'm curious how the numbers look to get to that result. The lowest rate I've heard of was ~0.7%.
        MagnumOpus 5y ago
        EU maximum for debit cards is 0.2% and for debit cards is 0.3%. Major clients like Amazon, Tesco or Aldi have leverage and probably pay half that... https://www.linklaters.com/en/insights/blogs/fintechlinks/2020/july/eu-retains-interchange-fee-cap-on-card-payments-for-now https://www.linklaters.com/en/insights/blogs/fintechlinks/20...
        ricardobeat 5y ago
        Isnt the majority of VISA transactions on credit cards, not debit? Those have rates in the 1-3% range, so even with the lower debit rates everything should average to more than 0.2%.
- killingtime74 5y ago
  Just fyi you need to get authorisation from Competition regulator for that. It’s also known as a cartel…(you’re talking about price fixing).
  - yardstick 5y ago
    Would this include PayPal? They are the middleman between many, many merchants and acquirers, I assume they have sufficient transaction volume to negotiate prices. Same with Square (who technically are a single merchant but with lots of payment points)
- chinathrow 5y ago
  It still blows my mind that we have credit card fees structured mostly in percentages of the payment amount instead of what essentially the costs associated with payments are: fixed.
  - Reason077 5y ago
    Not all costs are fixed. Dealing with fraud, for example, becomes more costly with higher transaction values.
    - chinathrow 5y ago
      Can you explain that a bit? Isn't the anti-fraud system in place (software, people) roughly the same, no matter if 2B or 20B are transferred per day?
      - 7steps2much 5y ago
        If a person were to commit fraud they would do it on big, high value transactions. Fraudulently buying a pizza isn't really all that much payoff for our fraudsters after all. They will buy stuff that's expensive. This means that to credit card companies, the bigger the transaction, the more likely that they will have to spend time and effort on fraud investigations etc. Man hours are expensive though, and as such it is important someone pays for it. And well, that's where the percentage system comes from.
        Ichthypresbyter 5y ago
        >Fraudulently buying a pizza isn't really all that much payoff for our fraudsters after all. Although they will sometimes do that as a test before making a bigger purchase. When my mother's card was cloned, the first fraudulent purchase was a coffee or sandwich at a railway station in a different city (but one close enough that it was believable she might have been there). Her bank only alerted her the next day when it was used to buy jewelry.
stefan_ 5y ago
Context: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/jan/16/last-minute-deal-needed-uk-visa-credit-cards-amazon https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/jan/16/last-minu...
1cvmask 5y ago
It would be nice to learn what the terms of the deal are and if it is about chargebacks or concessions on payment terms and fees.
- londons_explore 5y ago
  Chances are we'll never know the terms of the deal.
- Reason077 5y ago
  It’s about interchange fees on cross-border transactions following Brexit. Amazon sells many good to UK customers from its EU warehouses, but such transactions are no longer protected by the EU & UK interchange fee caps (if the customer is using a UK-issued card).
  - alibarber 5y ago
    All transactions are UK -> Amazon Luxembourg, regardless of where the goods are shipped from, the majority are from within UK warehouses. Amazon is simply taking the money in Luxembourg and landing the profits there instead of the UK. This is now more expensive to do from UK customers.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
tuyguntn 5y ago
Capitalism at its worst. When Amazon (non digital service), Apple, Google (digital) charges 30% fee for their services, no one can do anything, but when Visa increased their fees from 0.2% to 0.3% and 1.15 to 1.5% Amazon is screaming and shutting them down. And eventually they won and probably got nice discount as well, when other merchants can't do anything with it
- mschuster91 5y ago
  The current events are yet another Brexit-related issue IIRC. Under EU regulations, CC fees are capped under Reg 2015/751 [1]. As a consequence of Brexit, British consumers and companies lost the protections that EU law provides and that have been not codified into British law (like the GDPR was). The legal foundation for the EU to regulate CC fees is the goal of ensuring affordable equal access to credit/debit card payments for all consumers, and the legal authority are decades of banking regulation. App stores are not seen as part of that regulation since their payments are not deemed to be instruments of finance, so there is no legal basis to cap their fees - but individual member states can (and do, like the Netherlands [2]) regulate app stores. [1]: https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/HTML/?uri=CELEX:32015R0751&from=EN https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/HTML/?uri=CEL... [2]: https://www.heise.de/news/Niederlande-Erstmals-externe-Bezahldienste-in-Apples-App-Store-erlaubt-6327449.html https://www.heise.de/news/Niederlande-Erstmals-externe-Bezah...
  - alibarber 5y ago
    It's more complicated than that. UK -> UK transactions are capped at the same rate as they were pre-brexit. That was codified into UK law. The problem here is that Amazon UK, the part that the consumer pays at least, is _not_ a UK company, it is a Luxembourg based company. Therefore, there is no cap because from their side it is an EU -> Non EU payment received, no longer an intra EU payment. These types of payments were never capped by the EU. So yes, Brexit caused this, but then, given that other companies do seem to be able to take payments in the UK, and that all of their physical UK operations take place in the UK, perhaps they could have avoided it by re-locating the payments to the UK. Except, I do think that may have meant attracting a higher tax bill. Honestly, making it difficult for companies to relocate their profits to a tax haven could be regarded by some as a feature of Brexit, instead of a bug.
mavhc 5y ago
I read somewhere that Amazon pay more because they don't ask you for the CVC number, to enable easier purchasing
- objclxt 5y ago
  You do not necessarily pay a higher rate, but you become directly liable for all fraud, rather than the credit card company or bank. So effectively you will be paying a lot more. I suspect Amazon have run the numbers and determined that people are more likely to buy stuff when they don't need to enter the CVC, which when combined with their own anti-fraud engines (which are probably as good if not better than Visa's) result in a lower cost overall.
  - ngcc_hk 5y ago
    Another way to put it is Amazon knew their customers and their behaviour. Hence your “run the number” is not just for general risk but for that customers. In particular in this lock down, so many being purchased unless sone odd purchase it is very hard to fool them for big loss. You really have to handle how to get the goods from Amazon and resell them in a fraud. Not easy to get the trick work I guess. Unlike money you have to deliver to a physical address.
dannyw 5y ago
Hopefully they reverse their Amazon.com.au 0.5% visa surcharge soon.
lifeisstillgood 5y ago
This was a fascinating piece of bluff calling by Amazon. I honestly expected Visa to hold their ground and let Amazon refuse to accept payment for millions of people. Edit: fair enough, I do not know if Amazon or Visa caved. I simply assumed Visa would. Then again it was Amazon threatening, so the only way for the world to know if Visa held on, is for Visa to hold on till Jan 19. At the moment we can assume both pulled back, or Amazon "won". Only once Jan 19 passes could we assume Amazon caved. Edit: Amazon UK has 15 Million Prime subscribers, and visa has ~ 80% market share in UK, so I am happy to say "millions" of people would at least have to scrabble and update their purchase settings. It would be disruptive to amazon - but the total cost? https://dontdisappoint.me.uk/resources/technology/amazon-statistics-uk/ https://dontdisappoint.me.uk/resources/technology/amazon-sta...
- rtb 5y ago
  Do you know that Visa have backed down and not Amazon? Can you share any info? I wasn't able to find any details of the deal.
  - mytailorisrich 5y ago
    My guess is that Visa caved and that it was the plan. My rationale for this guess is that everyone in the UK who has a Visa credit card also has, at the very least, a Visa or Mastercard debit card. So this was going to make people change payment method but I doubt was going to make them stop buying from Amazon. I am exactly in that case and, like many, a Prime subscriber. I would have just changed card on Amazon and my use of my Visa credit card would have dropped 80%. Let's face it no-one was going to drop Amazon because of this and they knew it. In the UK Amazon sells $26 billion of stuff annually.
- pbalau 5y ago
  I really doubt there are millions of us that chose to pay on Amazon with Visa Credit Cards, here in UK.
  - School-Cotton 5y ago
mrkramer 5y ago
It's all about who gets greater percentage of each transaction, that's why they split ways and are now negating it again.
mchusma 5y ago
The Visa/MasterCard/Amex tax is real, and large. Hopefully we can find a way to end it soon. Payment transfers really should be nearly free. But deals like this are not the way to get it done, they just make it less competitive for small businesses.

66 points by Kaibeezy 5y ago

themihai 5y ago

It would be nice to see a Union of merchants. I'm pretty sure Amazon got a sweat deal given its power but the poor small merchant pays the full fee price.

chmod775 5y ago
Isn't it the norm for smaller stores to pass the cost onto the consumer? That's in effect just as good. Visa doesn't want to be seen as "the card it's expensive to buy stuff with".
- yardstick 5y ago
  In many countries it’s illegal for merchants to charge differently based on payment method. So ironically you are better off using Amex or some high fee card with rewards because the merchant has to factor it into the sticker price.
  - dannyw 5y ago
    In many countries being the USA, whose Supreme Court deemed it anti-competitive for courts to strike down Visa/Mastercard/AmEx's clause that makes it illegal for merchants to pass along processing costs to consumers.
    - lillecarl 5y ago
      Same in Sweden, no card charges here. They used to decline card purchases on smaller amounts, but I don't see that anywhere anymore either. Our credit card rewards are absolutely terrible in comparison to the US though.
      - School-Cotton 5y ago
        Interesting. A minimum purchase of $10 or $15 for credit cards is still common at bars and small, independently-owned stores in the US.
        lillecarl 5y ago
        I was at the grocery store the other day to pick up a package, bought an energy drink for 8 SEK (<1$). In a convenience store prices are just higher to cover fees. (I guess) I haven't paid for a beer with cash since I came home from a trip to Indonesia & Australia ~3 years ago. A normal bar-beer would set you back between 30 and 90 SEK (commonly 65) in Sweden, exchange rate is about 1$ to 9 SEK.
    - bb123 5y ago
      Also the UK
    - hdjjhhvvhga 5y ago
      Fortunately, there are countries where it's not the case. When you think about it for a moment, it's extremely clear how unfair this clause is for everybody except credit card companies.
      - vinay427 5y ago
        Honestly, I prefer it as a consumer. In the US, one can relatively easily find a card that gets 2% back on every transaction, if not more, with 3-7% not uncommon for certain spending. Even at 1-2% back, most of the price increase by a merchant is recouped, and some nominal extra amount is perfectly acceptable to me for the convenience. Cash isn't free to accept either for most merchants, given the security risks, so I can't imagine I'd be saving much (if anything) if different prices were allowed for cash transactions.
  - rswail 5y ago
    In Australia, the merchant surcharges are allowed, but not more than the cost to the business, with the regulator (ACCC) paying a lot of attention to that. Most small operators will have a 1-2% surcharge for credit cards and Amex sometimes either not accepted or higher. https://www.accc.gov.au/consumers/prices-surcharges-receipts/credit-debit-prepaid-card-surcharges https://www.accc.gov.au/consumers/prices-surcharges-receipts...
- bayindirh 5y ago
  All stores pass the cost onto the consumer. It's in the price. Having to pay the full price limit smaller stores' power to compete on price with the bigger ones.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
- IshKebab 5y ago
  That doesn't mean small merchants are unaffected by the higher prices they have to charge. They still have to charge higher prices, which means less profit.
  - teamonkey 5y ago
    They also pay a higher rate of tax than Amazon
- mihaaly 5y ago
  "Isn't it the norm for smaller stores to pass the cost onto the consumer?" ...and sell for more than the big ones, loosing cutomers? Yes. This is what would be nice to be avoided.
- azalemeth 5y ago
  The trouble is that Visa/Mastercard/Amex are all american corporations who have effectively extracted a ~1% tax on a large proportion of every in-person non-cash monetary transaction worldwide. That's a huge amount of power for an unelected, unaccountable organisation to have, and one that returns money to its american shareowners and employees only. Exactly how the tax is collected is a matter for the businesses to hide. I don't like it one bit, but there's nothing I can do about it.
  - Youden 5y ago
    Maybe you simply intended your comment as hyperbole but if not: - It's not a 1% tax worldwide. For example most of Europe uses debit cards instead of credit and the fees are regulated to be much lower than 1%. This also demonstrates that Visa's power is not unchecked. - Visa may be listed on American exchanges but foreign nationals can buy shares no problems. On the percentage, I was curious and had a look at Visa's financials [0]. On payment volume of $10.4T, they reported revenue of $24.1B, so they get about 0.2% overall. [0]: https://annualreport.visa.com/financials/default.aspx https://annualreport.visa.com/financials/default.aspx
    - ricardobeat 5y ago
      I'm curious how the numbers look to get to that result. The lowest rate I've heard of was ~0.7%.
      - MagnumOpus 5y ago
        EU maximum for debit cards is 0.2% and for debit cards is 0.3%. Major clients like Amazon, Tesco or Aldi have leverage and probably pay half that... https://www.linklaters.com/en/insights/blogs/fintechlinks/2020/july/eu-retains-interchange-fee-cap-on-card-payments-for-now https://www.linklaters.com/en/insights/blogs/fintechlinks/20...
        ricardobeat 5y ago
        Isnt the majority of VISA transactions on credit cards, not debit? Those have rates in the 1-3% range, so even with the lower debit rates everything should average to more than 0.2%.
killingtime74 5y ago
Just fyi you need to get authorisation from Competition regulator for that. It’s also known as a cartel…(you’re talking about price fixing).
- yardstick 5y ago
  Would this include PayPal? They are the middleman between many, many merchants and acquirers, I assume they have sufficient transaction volume to negotiate prices. Same with Square (who technically are a single merchant but with lots of payment points)
chinathrow 5y ago
It still blows my mind that we have credit card fees structured mostly in percentages of the payment amount instead of what essentially the costs associated with payments are: fixed.
- Reason077 5y ago
  Not all costs are fixed. Dealing with fraud, for example, becomes more costly with higher transaction values.
  - chinathrow 5y ago
    Can you explain that a bit? Isn't the anti-fraud system in place (software, people) roughly the same, no matter if 2B or 20B are transferred per day?
    - 7steps2much 5y ago
      If a person were to commit fraud they would do it on big, high value transactions. Fraudulently buying a pizza isn't really all that much payoff for our fraudsters after all. They will buy stuff that's expensive. This means that to credit card companies, the bigger the transaction, the more likely that they will have to spend time and effort on fraud investigations etc. Man hours are expensive though, and as such it is important someone pays for it. And well, that's where the percentage system comes from.
      - Ichthypresbyter 5y ago
        >Fraudulently buying a pizza isn't really all that much payoff for our fraudsters after all. Although they will sometimes do that as a test before making a bigger purchase. When my mother's card was cloned, the first fraudulent purchase was a coffee or sandwich at a railway station in a different city (but one close enough that it was believable she might have been there). Her bank only alerted her the next day when it was used to buy jewelry.

stefan_ 5y ago

Context: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/jan/16/last-minute-deal-needed-uk-visa-credit-cards-amazon https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/jan/16/last-minu...

1cvmask 5y ago

It would be nice to learn what the terms of the deal are and if it is about chargebacks or concessions on payment terms and fees.

londons_explore 5y ago
Chances are we'll never know the terms of the deal.
Reason077 5y ago
It’s about interchange fees on cross-border transactions following Brexit. Amazon sells many good to UK customers from its EU warehouses, but such transactions are no longer protected by the EU & UK interchange fee caps (if the customer is using a UK-issued card).
- alibarber 5y ago
  All transactions are UK -> Amazon Luxembourg, regardless of where the goods are shipped from, the majority are from within UK warehouses. Amazon is simply taking the money in Luxembourg and landing the profits there instead of the UK. This is now more expensive to do from UK customers.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]

tuyguntn 5y ago

Capitalism at its worst. When Amazon (non digital service), Apple, Google (digital) charges 30% fee for their services, no one can do anything, but when Visa increased their fees from 0.2% to 0.3% and 1.15 to 1.5% Amazon is screaming and shutting them down. And eventually they won and probably got nice discount as well, when other merchants can't do anything with it

mschuster91 5y ago
The current events are yet another Brexit-related issue IIRC. Under EU regulations, CC fees are capped under Reg 2015/751 [1]. As a consequence of Brexit, British consumers and companies lost the protections that EU law provides and that have been not codified into British law (like the GDPR was). The legal foundation for the EU to regulate CC fees is the goal of ensuring affordable equal access to credit/debit card payments for all consumers, and the legal authority are decades of banking regulation. App stores are not seen as part of that regulation since their payments are not deemed to be instruments of finance, so there is no legal basis to cap their fees - but individual member states can (and do, like the Netherlands [2]) regulate app stores. [1]: https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/HTML/?uri=CELEX:32015R0751&from=EN https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/HTML/?uri=CEL... [2]: https://www.heise.de/news/Niederlande-Erstmals-externe-Bezahldienste-in-Apples-App-Store-erlaubt-6327449.html https://www.heise.de/news/Niederlande-Erstmals-externe-Bezah...
- alibarber 5y ago
  It's more complicated than that. UK -> UK transactions are capped at the same rate as they were pre-brexit. That was codified into UK law. The problem here is that Amazon UK, the part that the consumer pays at least, is _not_ a UK company, it is a Luxembourg based company. Therefore, there is no cap because from their side it is an EU -> Non EU payment received, no longer an intra EU payment. These types of payments were never capped by the EU. So yes, Brexit caused this, but then, given that other companies do seem to be able to take payments in the UK, and that all of their physical UK operations take place in the UK, perhaps they could have avoided it by re-locating the payments to the UK. Except, I do think that may have meant attracting a higher tax bill. Honestly, making it difficult for companies to relocate their profits to a tax haven could be regarded by some as a feature of Brexit, instead of a bug.

mavhc 5y ago

I read somewhere that Amazon pay more because they don't ask you for the CVC number, to enable easier purchasing

objclxt 5y ago
You do not necessarily pay a higher rate, but you become directly liable for all fraud, rather than the credit card company or bank. So effectively you will be paying a lot more. I suspect Amazon have run the numbers and determined that people are more likely to buy stuff when they don't need to enter the CVC, which when combined with their own anti-fraud engines (which are probably as good if not better than Visa's) result in a lower cost overall.
- ngcc_hk 5y ago
  Another way to put it is Amazon knew their customers and their behaviour. Hence your “run the number” is not just for general risk but for that customers. In particular in this lock down, so many being purchased unless sone odd purchase it is very hard to fool them for big loss. You really have to handle how to get the goods from Amazon and resell them in a fraud. Not easy to get the trick work I guess. Unlike money you have to deliver to a physical address.

dannyw 5y ago

Hopefully they reverse their Amazon.com.au 0.5% visa surcharge soon.

lifeisstillgood 5y ago

This was a fascinating piece of bluff calling by Amazon. I honestly expected Visa to hold their ground and let Amazon refuse to accept payment for millions of people. Edit: fair enough, I do not know if Amazon or Visa caved. I simply assumed Visa would. Then again it was Amazon threatening, so the only way for the world to know if Visa held on, is for Visa to hold on till Jan 19. At the moment we can assume both pulled back, or Amazon "won". Only once Jan 19 passes could we assume Amazon caved. Edit: Amazon UK has 15 Million Prime subscribers, and visa has ~ 80% market share in UK, so I am happy to say "millions" of people would at least have to scrabble and update their purchase settings. It would be disruptive to amazon - but the total cost? https://dontdisappoint.me.uk/resources/technology/amazon-statistics-uk/ https://dontdisappoint.me.uk/resources/technology/amazon-sta...

rtb 5y ago
Do you know that Visa have backed down and not Amazon? Can you share any info? I wasn't able to find any details of the deal.
- mytailorisrich 5y ago
  My guess is that Visa caved and that it was the plan. My rationale for this guess is that everyone in the UK who has a Visa credit card also has, at the very least, a Visa or Mastercard debit card. So this was going to make people change payment method but I doubt was going to make them stop buying from Amazon. I am exactly in that case and, like many, a Prime subscriber. I would have just changed card on Amazon and my use of my Visa credit card would have dropped 80%. Let's face it no-one was going to drop Amazon because of this and they knew it. In the UK Amazon sells $26 billion of stuff annually.
pbalau 5y ago
I really doubt there are millions of us that chose to pay on Amazon with Visa Credit Cards, here in UK.
- School-Cotton 5y ago

mrkramer 5y ago

It's all about who gets greater percentage of each transaction, that's why they split ways and are now negating it again.

mchusma 5y ago

The Visa/MasterCard/Amex tax is real, and large. Hopefully we can find a way to end it soon. Payment transfers really should be nearly free. But deals like this are not the way to get it done, they just make it less competitive for small businesses.