Amazon - no longer accepting Visa Credit Cards

This isn’t a scam. It also isn’t in place yet (comes in January). I think it’s a case of Amazon trying to push visa to lower fees.

In all honesty I would expect a sudden announcement at some stage where Amazon get preferential treatment from visa

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Just another reason to avoid Amazon as much as possible. Let’s hope other retailers don’t follow suit however!

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Going off memory as it was a while ago, visa really take the piss vs MasterCard on business and foreign credit cards, for consumer credit at least at the time they were competitive.

It was around 500% more to take a Visa UK business credit card over a consumer one, often lower volume quotes (stripe , sumup etc ) will roll it into one fee and either take a loss or near loss on expensive cards, or maybe they have the volume to negotiate it down.

But this was on quotes for a few million turnover pa ( a while back)

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Guessing as well amex who most likley lower fees for large volume flat rate their fees no matter the type of amex card.

Walmart has fell out with visa before in Canada

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Visa said it was “very disappointed that Amazon is threatening to restrict consumer choice in the future”.

:fist_right: :sweat:

:dizzy_face: :fist_left:

Amazon said: “The cost of accepting card payments continues to be an obstacle for businesses striving to provide the best prices for customers.”

The online retailer said costs should be going down over time due to advances in technology, “but instead they continue to stay high or even rise”.

Kinda true though costs should be going down in increasing efficiency, but Visa don’t want to be making less money that would be silly.

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Playing Devil’s Advocate here, I’m sure Visa would say that they have reduced overall running costs via technological innovations - but they have also reinvested those savings into new technology and improvements to the network.

Things like tokenisation, anti-fraud algorithms and EMV standard upgrades.

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Analysis and reasons here

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Right so basically, this is all because Amazon pretends its UK business is based in Luxembourg, and they are now upset this is slightly less beneficial to them, although not so much so that they might consider admitting it’s a UK business and paying tax.

Thankfully for them I didn’t have any sympathy for their case to lose in the first place :smiley:

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Ironically, MasterCard announced the identical increase in fees before Visa did…

I’m sure they have already have a deal considering the Amazon credit card is MasterCard.

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I’ll eat my hat if this actually happens. Visa will almost certainly back down

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Amazon may back down as well - Barclaycard are the biggest credit card issuer in the UK and only issue Visa cards…

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It depends - how many people would only have a Barclaycard and no other option to use to buy something from Amazon, and how many alternatives are there to buy something from a different supplier other than Amazon?

Knowing people’s attitudes, I suspect if they found something on Amazon, they’d then find a payment method to buy what they’ve found, rather than go off onto another site and find the same thing there just to use their Visa credit card.

I suspect Visa have a bit more to loose than Amazon on this and most people will stick with Amazon and find an alternative option to buy something rather than have to go and find an alternative supplier.

Also, could a big organisation like Barclaycard also pressure Visa to sort this out or threaten to also jump ship to Mastercard?

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Could this all be a storm in a teacup? :thinking:

A few years ago, the budget airlines, namely Ryanair and Easyjet used to add extra fees for paying with certain cards.
Eventually, because of potential lost revenue, they both backed down and now accept almost all payment methods.
Just an observation, but you never know.

The government outlawed the practice of charging consumers different fees depending on payment method.

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Ahhh, wasn’t aware of that :man_facepalming:

But hopefully, the UK market is big enough for both Visa and Amazon to reach some sort of solution

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Jan 2018 :slight_smile:

I love the BBCs line about will this increase the cost.

As a result they may add this cost into their headline price.

Yes.

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I have different cards but the only credit card I purchase things on is actually with Barclays. And it’s not like credit can be easily moved around like a banks balance. If I needed to buy something on credit, I’d have to find another store if they weren’t accepting Visa. I doubt that’s uncommon frankly, and a lot of people are on credit during Jan.

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Whilst Chase now has 3% cashback offer on Amazon.

:face_with_raised_eyebrow::thinking:

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Same position here, discounting PayPal Credit (which Amazon don’t accept anyway, leaving just the Barclaycard for expensive purchases on Amazon).

I suppose this gives me an excuse to break out the trusty old Amex again so I have a reason to use it, but then I’m just adding another card into my rotation and adding complexity. Also a bit disappointed in AMEX electing to put their rates up. Not that I ever pay them, but it’s just principle. Not a single credit card, to my knowledge, lowered them during the pandemic as the base rate collapsed into virtually nothing.

And the second we hear of the potential it goes back up, credit card companies start looking like :money_mouth_face:. Was surprised Amex were the first to do it in all honesty. Thought they were better.

I think I’m at a point where I’m getting fed up with our credit card options in the U.K. I really want something new, and better now. Everything is stagnant and complacent.

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