That’s the thing though! Depends how Visa decide to play their next move!
Amazon arguable need to accept Visa debit cards, and visa could take advantage of that to shift things back in their favour.
They do seem to be dwindling in use in the UK though, because it feels like everyone is moving to MasterCard, so their negotiation power isn’t as strong as it probably used to be either, and will get worse, especially as NatWest and RBS transition away.
It’s always interesting to watch when these things play out on the public stage.
Absolutely, although they are a bit stuck as they already (presumably) get paid less for debit cards anyway, and Amazon would never accept them putting that rate up, so they are somewhat boxed into a corner with that.
Of course, they could threaten to increase it if Amazon don’t accept their credit cards, or they could offer a lower rate if Amazon accepts their credit cards, but not much else.
An interesting comment in the evening standard article listing the potential fee rise amount:
The move comes after Visa increased fees last month. The Financial Times reported earlier this year that Visa would raise fees charged on transactions between the UK and EU from 0.3% to 1.5% from October. Amazon.co.uk is operating by the company’s Luxembourg business, its European headquarters.
Looking forward to Amazon’s foray into alternative payment methods/crypto. I, at least, think they’ll do a marginally better job than Facebook.
Hilarious that they’re accepting AMEX over Visa; they must be making bank off each other, Visa not wanting to play ball smh
I missed this: Amazon are giving customers £20 to switch from a Visa Credit as their default card (£10 for non-Prime members). Sounds a lot! Is it really worth that much to them?
Both my mother and I replaced our default Visa credit cards with a Mastercard debit card. She got the £20 offer but I didn’t. Anybody know if there are any other requirements? We both have Prime.
This was the situation in 2018:
"The majority of debit cards in the UK are Visa Debit cards, accounting for 97% of cards in issue. The remainder are MasterCard debit cards. However, the number of
MasterCard debit cards is increasing, with growth of 5.4%during 2017.
In comparison, 58% of credit and charge cards in the UK carry the MasterCard brand, with 36% carrying Visa branding and the remaining 5% being provided by other companies such as American Express."
I would love for a British company that fulfilled the same role as Amazon, didn’t treat its warehouse workers like crap and paid full tax in the UK to exist, bad sadly nothing comes close in my experience. I do now use Argos, though, quite a bit for some things I would’ve previously got from Amazon. The prices can be really good, I love the free and instant click and collect (I don’t pay for Prime and often take advantage of my local Amazon Locker when using Amazon anyway because I hate waiting in for deliveries), I can collect and spend Nectar points and I’d rather support Sainsbury’s Group as a company than Amazon, but obviously the selection available doesn’t really compare to Amazon’s monumental marketplace.
