Payment News

More Analysis of Amazon v Visa

Amazon has announced that from 19 January 2022 in the UK it will stop accepting Visa credit card payments due to their high cost. This follows the post-Brexit removal of the interchange cap imposed by the European Commission. Amazon has also introduced surcharges on Visa credit cards in Singapore and Australia.

While most global online purchases are not made with international credit cards, in the UK 52% of payments were made using credit and debit cards and Visa accounted for 82% of those. Mastercard has about 38 million credit cards on issue, with Visa close to 20 million (GlobalData).

Amazon’s action points a spotlight on card fee structures and is likely to prompt a wider review of what payments cost. Amazon’s position is that costs ‘should be going down over time with technological advancements, but instead, they continue to stay high or even rise.’ Cost isn’t, perhaps, the only driver here. For example, Mastercard is Amazon’s credit card issuing partner and this move is likely to drive business to Amazon Platinum Mastercard. There is also a view that there has been a general lack of innovation in the payments space.