Amazon has escalated its battle with Visa: Starting on January nineteenth, 2022, the e-commerce large will stop accepting Visa bank cards issued within the UK. It notified Amazon UK clients in an e-mail in regards to the change, blaming the excessive charges Visa costs for bank card transactions. Buyers can a minimum of proceed utilizing their Visa bank cards all through the vacations, however after that, they’d have to change to a Visa debit card or one other bank card like a Mastercard or an AMEX.
An Amazon spokesperson mentioned in an announcement:
“The cost of accepting card payments continues to be an obstacle for businesses striving to provide the best prices for customers. These costs should be going down over time with technological advancements, but instead they continue to stay high or even rise. As a result of Visa’s continued high cost of payments, we regret that Amazon.co.uk will no longer accept UK-issued Visa credit cards as of 19 January, 2022. Customers can continue to use all debit cards (including Visa debit cards) and other non-Visa credit cards to shop on Amazon.co.uk. With the rapidly changing payments landscape around the world, we will continue innovating on behalf of customers to add and promote faster, cheaper, and more inclusive payment options to our stores across the globe.”
Meanwhile, a Visa spokesperson mentioned the corporate is disenchanted that “Amazon is threatening to restrict consumer choice in the future.” They added: “When consumer choice is limited, nobody wins.” They additionally mentioned that Visa is working in the direction of a decision with the e-commerce large in order that cardholders can carry on utilizing their UK-issued Visa bank cards on the web site “without Amazon-imposed restrictions come January 2022.” It’s value noting that Amazon has a a lot better relationship with different bank card suppliers. The e-commerce large presently has a partnership with Mastercard for shopper bank cards and with AMEX for business cards within the UK.
The firms could also be participating in a public struggle in an effort to get higher phrases from one another. Amazon has been placing strain on the bank card model over the previous few months and began imposing a 0.5 p.c surcharge on Visa bank card purchases on its Singapore web site on September fifteenth. A month-and-a-half after that, Amazon additionally began imposing a surcharge on Visa transactions in Australia. In each situations, the corporate supplied clients a present card (AU$20 and SG$30) so as to add another cost methodology that is not a Visa bank card.
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