Amazon To Stop Accepting UK Visa Credit Cards Imminently
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Amazon will stop accepting Visa credit cards as early as next week after the two companies failed to find an agreement in their long-running dispute.
The pair had been rowing over rising Visa transaction fees, which Amazon claims is affecting its sellers and creating an ‘obstacle’ for small online shops that were trying to keep their prices at a competitive level.
Amazon believes that due to advances in technology, transaction fees should be decreasing over time, but pointed out that they were instead staying high and in some cases rising.
Both companies had been trying to sort out a resolution, with a fallout in neither side’s interests. For Visa, it would mean its credit card customers getting cut off from the world’s most popular online retailer, while Amazon could lose nearly £1.4 billion from severing ties.
However, speaking to the Daily Mirror, Amazon today confirmed that no agreement was forthcoming. This means that from January 19, Amazon customers will no longer be able to purchase goods using a Visa credit card if it was issued in the UK.
An Amazon spokesman said:
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,’ it added.
Meanwhile, Visa said in a statement it was ‘very disappointed that Amazon is threatening to restrict consumer choice in the future. When consumer choice is limited, nobody wins’.
Visa debit cards will still be operational for customers, as will MasterCard and Amex credit cards. Visa credit cards issued outside of the UK will also still acceptable.
The row stems from Visa’s decision last year to raise interchange charges on items ordered in the UK from Europe. The company told its 4,000 clients of the move in March 2021, which means that the rate has increased to 1.5% for online credit card payments – a fivefold increase.
For debit card transactions, the rate rose from 0.2% to 1.15%.
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