Amazon and Visa agree deal to accept credit cards

“We’ve recently reached a global agreement with Visa that allows all customers to continue using their Visa credit cards in our stores”, said a statement from Amazon.

“This agreement includes the acceptance of Visa at all Amazon stores and sites today, as well as a joint commitment to collaboration on new product and technology initiatives to ensure innovative payment experiences for our customers in the future”, Visa said in response.

The cost of processing Visa card payments was labelled ‘an obstacle’ to providing their customers with the best possible prices by Amazon last year when they started to consider banning these cards.
Following Brexit, a cap on credit card fees that was in place by the EU, was no longer applicable in the UK. Last October, Visa had started to charge credit card holders 1.5 per cent of any online transaction fee made between the UK and the EU. Previously, it had been 0.3 per cent.
The charges were said to not apply to Visa debit cards though. But, according to the UK Treasury Committee, both Visa, and Mastercard, had increased the cost of processing debit card payments from 0.2 per cent to 1.15 per cent.
“When consumer choice is limited, nobody wins”, Visa said of Amazon at the time, accusing them of restricting customer choice. Meanwhile, a review of credit card fees, carried out by the Payment Systems Regulator, revealed that they had “increased significantly in recent months”, and this is currently under investigation, as reported by bbc.com.