Hacker News Reader

Comment by uzakov | Hacker News Reader

I think situation in 2021 is very different in London: AMEX is accepted nearly everywhere in central London (Even on markets etc), there are ofc some shops that don't take it but generally AMEX is widely accepted.

Re: Mastercard

It seems that Mastercard is more widespread among "hot" banking startups, ie I can create virtual debit Mastercards on Revolut and Monzo

View on HN

I'd like to see some stats on that. My own experience is much closer to that of the OP.

Other than some occasional small restaurants/pubs, and a few small indie shops, its basically accepted everywhere here in Edinburgh, I have a corporate amex and use it for expensing business dinners very often, and supplies from office shops, supermarkets, etc..

I used to have a corporate Amex, and it was a nightmare to use it in London. Even in places that said they accepted it, when I attempted to pay the card reader rejected it. That was about 5 years ago, maybe times have changed - it would be great to see data rather than a mixture of anecdotes.

Was your card Chip & PIN? Didn't have a problem with my British-issued Amex in London 5 years ago.

Yeah, my success rate for the corporate Amex in Europe is 70-80% which means the remaining time I need to fill out more tedious paperwork to get reimbursed to my personal card. The US based finance team continue to insist its much better now, but a 20-30% failure rate is too high

Amex has gone the lower-fee route on some cards in recent years. Visa, with Visa Signature, may be going the other way.

AMEX now has fee-free cards, which afaik still offer cashback and offers

> It seems that Mastercard is more widespread among "hot" banking startups, ie I can create virtual debit Mastercards on Revolut and Monzo

They were definitely first in this space but Revolut has issued Visa's (in some cases) for a while now, and for instance Wise has recently switched from MasterCard to Visa entirely.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com