Amazon stop accepting Visa Credit cards from 19th Jan 22??!

Soldato
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Y'all just not socialite enough to know the fear of low battery anymore :rolleyes::D:cry:

Edit; I still have a 20 quid note folded in the back of my phone case too :cry:

Should probably just buy a tinfoil hat.

I keep talking about doing this for certain transactions. I was trying to buy some shallots/tomatoes at a market stall the other week and couldn't pay with card under £5 so had to leave it and find somewhere else. I think having a bit of backup cash is probably a sensible option.
 
Soldato
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Well actually - it doesn't have anything to do with it technically - particularly as Jean referenced a debit card.

- They (Santander) changed provider based on their own business needs. Potentially fee's or a whole host of other reasons.
- Amazon are clearly making a similar decision but from the acquiring choice side.

Natwest and First Direct/HSBC too, amongst other banks.
 
Soldato
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I’m surprised the issuers haven’t closed some of them. If they do that, it hurts your credit rating instantly

Are you saying it hurts your score more if the issuer took it upon themselves to close unused account for you, or simply closing credit card accounts generally - even if initiated by yourself - hurts the score the same?
 
Soldato
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Credit scores as given by experian etc. are a bit of a nonesense.

Each lender has their own set of lending criteria driven by their own risk profile for you and your history.

How much you earn and how much other credit you have (aka affordability), and any history of missed payments or defaults is the main driver behind lending decisions.
 
Caporegime
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so you get £10 gift card after spending £333.33 is that my useless GCSE maths coming back to me

On Amazon.co.uk
Earn 3 Amazon Reward Points
per £2 spent

Everywhere else
Earn 0.5 Amazon Reward Point
per £2 spent
Amazon Reward Points 1000 Points = £10 Amazon.co.uk Gift Card

1000 points is 333.33 lots of £2 spent. £666.66 for a £10 voucher. In reality more because presumably they round down.
 
Soldato
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Sky think otherwise.

Mastercard increased rates too:
https://www.cashmatters.org/blog/mastercard-raise-fees-uk-purchases-eu
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-55796426

The Financial Times reports that Mastercard will raise fees to more than five times the current amount for British shoppers using a card to buy from EU-based companies, providing a timely reminder of the power card providers wield over customers reliant on them for payments.
Both Mastercard and Visa add an ‘interchange fee’ to every credit or debit card payment using their networks, and in 2015 the European Union introduced a cap on these fees in response to concerns that ‘hidden expenses’ for companies and consumers were reaching hundreds of millions of euros.

Post-Brexit, Mastercard has informed merchants this cap will no longer apply to certain transactions because payments between Britain and the European Economic Area are now technically ‘inter-regional.’ As a result, from 15 October 2021, Mastercard will charge 1.5 percent of each transaction’s value for every online credit card payment from the UK to the EU. This is a 500 percent rise over the present 0.3 percent charge. Debit card payments will increase from 0.2 percent to 1.15 percent.
They did it before VISA did:
https://www.ft.com/content/39f553a0-00c5-48ad-a8ee-0b9fd75554b0
https://www.ft.com/content/4820b619-4d35-4c6a-8523-fc685c047374

They were the first to do it,which gave VISA,etc the leeway to do it months later.

I would assume AMEX is doing the same,but the difference is both Mastercard and AMEX are on Amazon issued credit cards(didn't realise AMEX was also on them until someone pointed it out here),so they no doubt get a share of the interest generated on such cards.

The reality is that its better to use a UK based retailer anyway.

What people are seeing is another company which seems to be UK based but actually is based elsewhere for the financial part of the business,so you are doing business with a foreign company hence you get charged the higher fees.The best way around this is to use UK based alternatives where possible.
 
Soldato
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You're mad at Amazon for being tight and your solution is to get an Amazon card instead?

Seems like their plan is working flawlessly.

Exactly - Amazon is doing what Amazon does. Just makes up excuses to exclude companies which won't play ball with it,and then push people onto alternatives they make a cut out of. After all they did ban Google products off their own store....how convenient Amazon had branded products which were definitely not competing with them! :p

Also all this is pointing out is Amazon for financial aspects is a foreign company,which contributes to them avoiding a lot of tax in the UK! ;)
 
Caporegime
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It's come up a couple of times in the thread but Mastercard are generally second to Visa in whichever metric you might apply: card issuance, card acceptance, global presence, value and number of transactions etc.

I suspect this is Amazon working with another card scheme to generate better outcomes for themselves on merchant acquiring fees and the overall commercial deal.
 
Soldato
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[but even if you use a mastercard on amazon you don't get regular chargeback/insurance afaik - must have come up on this thread]


Isn't this like ebay too, who were trying to drop paypal - although they offer better returns ... and maybe? arbitration ,
doesn't seem to have progressed at the rate I'd expected and can still find sellers offering paypal, despite additional charges.
 
Soldato
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Exactly - Amazon is doing what Amazon does
Indeed. Fact is if this was really about the fees, why do Amazon accept Amex who have much higher fees?

All Amazon want is to push more people into using their MasterCard. Because it's co-branded, they will see all non-Amazon transactions and therefore know what you're buying outside of Amazon. Net result, they know what to sell you next time. They just want your data.
 
Soldato
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Indeed. Fact is if this was really about the fees, why do Amazon accept Amex who have much higher fees?

All Amazon want is to push more people into using their MasterCard. Because it's co-branded, they will see all non-Amazon transactions and therefore know what you're buying outside of Amazon. Net result, they know what to sell you next time. They just want your data.

I actually didn't think of the latter part - crikey you do have a point!!
 
Soldato
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In 2015, EU law had capped credit card interchange fees at 0.3%. However, after Brexit, the UK no longer enjoys that ceiling. Visa having increased these charges to 1.5% for Brits.

MasterCard made an identical fee hike but it hasn’t been blocked by Amazon.

Article from March 2021 here, regarding Visa set to raise fees after removal of EU cap post-Brexit >> https://www.ft.com/content/4820b619-...3-fc685c047374
 
Soldato
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In 2015, EU law had capped credit card interchange fees at 0.3%. However, after Brexit, the UK no longer enjoys that ceiling. Visa having increased these charges to 1.5% for Brits.

The Interchange Fees on Visa (And Mastercard Credit) are still 0.3%, it's the cross border scheme fees that appear to have been hiked or payments that have been made to Amazon are now considered cross border where they weren't before. UK merchants taking payments in the UK haven't seen any real changes in fees for quite some time on consumer cards, therefore your average UK store still pays roughly the same.

I've admittedly only had a brief skim read of what's going on but i'm pretty sure that when you make a payment to Amazon in the UK you are making a payment to a company that is still based in an EU country, there is the issue.
 
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Soldato
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In 2015, EU law had capped credit card interchange fees at 0.3%. However, after Brexit, the UK no longer enjoys that ceiling. Visa having increased these charges to 1.5% for Brits.
Wrong. @Iamzod is right. It's still 0.3% as shown here; https://www.visa.co.uk/about-visa/visa-in-europe/fees-and-interchange.html

Either way the interchange fee is taken by the acquirer bank (i.e. Amazon's bank). It doesn't go to Visa or Mastercard anyway so blaming Visa publicly for this is (quite successfully) confusing the issue for everyone.

If they want to complain about Visa's processing fees they could, but since scheme and process were separated by law - as a merchant you can actually choose to run e.g. all of your Visa transactions through Mastercard processing. So there's also not much to complain about there if they don't like the price.

Again, I repeat. This is all about Amazon bullying Visa and pushing their customers into using their co-branded Mastercard so that they can have more data on their customers. It's quite ugly really.
 
Soldato
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The Interchange Fees on Visa (And Mastercard Credit) are still 0.3%, it's the cross border scheme fees that appear to have been hiked or payments that have been made to Amazon are now considered cross border where they weren't before. UK merchants taking payments in the UK haven't seen any real changes in fees for quite some time on consumer cards, therefore your average UK store still pays roughly the same.

I've admittedly only had a brief skim read of what's going on but i'm pretty sure that when you make a payment to Amazon in the UK you are making a payment to a company that is still based in an EU country, there is the issue.

Yes you are still paying Amazon in Luxembourg.

I’ve noticed that a lot of previously EU companies have incorporated in the U.K. to take payments from U.K. customers. Particularly those selling services.

The interchange fee back to the EU makes sense as to why they have done it as that’s potentially 1% of their gross income lost to the fee. That is not an insignificant amount of money when it’s your gross sales.


@Scam your response doesn’t makes sense and is contrary to what @Iamzod wrote.
 
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