Amazon not accepting VISA credit cards issued in UK | Hacker News Reader

Amazon not accepting VISA credit cards issued in UK

smile.amazon.co.uk

13 pointsDonckele14 comments

I believe that costs associated with payment should always be an explicit part of the customer's bill, so that there would actually be competitive pressure between payment providers to drive down that cost.

It would also make it clear to the customer that they are actually paying themselves for those "rewards" on their card.

Most of UK customers are VISA debit card users. To be fair, I was completely convinced, that Master cards are the credit cards and VISA are debit cards... who knew.

Anyway - it appears that it is not my problem and I don't care.

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Where did you find that statistic? It's interesting as the general advice is to always use a credit card online as the protection from fraud is better (although I think debit card protection has improved in the last few years).

You probably have a decent salary or pension, where credit card is a common thing, because you are a big spender. I am in that category where people are considered poor.

Debit card is basic choice to people who has low income(you can look up statistics and that is biggest share of demographics in UK). Credit cards usually comes with charge and the last time I checked(~10 years ago) there were no credit cards that were for free. Things might have changed, but for anyone out there it is too much hassle to change bank accounts and it is for me and I know what I want and if I need credit card I will have one, but if I don't want one, I will have no use for that, like I don't have any use for that now so I don't have it.

As for general advice - my observation is that population, especially in UK, are somewhat very gullible and will believe anything and even fool themselves and that is the reason why banks are giving very simple and not deep enough information. The key difference between debit and credit card, when it comes to fraud are none - they both can be scammed equally easy(or equally hard). If I was a scammer, my logic would be that people with credit cards are filthy rich and I would go and order something for 1000 or even 10 000, but debit card is small fish - in most cases scammer might not be even able to order a pizza for themselves and that is the thing, that scammers ordered from my card... I know people, who empty their debit cards as soon as they get money in their account, so - meh... what is normal for you is not the norm for everyone.

Credit and debit cards have exactly the same information on their surface and scamming is exactly the same, however scammers can only take from debit cards only that money, that is on your account, but with credit cards - they can take all your money, that is in your account AND also get you in the debt. To mitigate this risk, banks are offering safety pillow, which has longer time limit on how much banks are going to reimburse your losses on credit cards, but they are still reimbursing losses on debit cards, if you report within 48 hour limit after scamming has happened - you have to look after your credit card as well, but the time limit here is longer. But if you have not been looking after your account for 6 months and if scammers were emptying your account in that time, it does not matter if your account is credit card or debit card - that money is gone and with credit card it is even worse - you are in debt now.

So, my general advice is to consider risks - I can't repay debts, so I don't own credit card. If you can afford to pay for losses and can earn enough money, well - that is not a thing you should worry about anyway.

I use Amazon as little as possible, I have always had good service and matched prices elsewhere. If they reject my Barclaycard it will reinforce my view.

I imagine they extract their Prime membership this way too. Are they going to stop that too? Interesting times.

I presume this is Amazon throwing their weight around in some negotiation with Visa?

More likely, that the user base of VISA credit cards in UK is not big enough to pay for using it.

After Brexit both Master cards and VISA cards have increased costs, so this can't be the reason.

The email I just received from Amazon states Visa's fees as the reason. I don't know what the relative !market shares are, but Visa credit cards are incredibly common here. I'd say more than half the credit cards I've ever had have been visa.

I think, that the information provided here is true. From the information I have gathered from sources that are running their small retail businesses, my take is that VISA is offering charge in tiers - for example(number are exagerated and hypothetical): tier 1: 1- 10 000 - 3,5% tier 2: 10 000 - 100 000 - 3% tier 3: 100 000 - 1 000 000 - 2,5%

etc. you get the idea, so if VISA credit has low transaction count, then expenses for the transactions are a lot higher than for VISA debit transactions - if the user base for VISA credit is couple of tiers lower than for rest of cards, it makes sense for these "rare" users to switch to other cards, so Amazaon does not have to subsidize their loss of income from VISA credit cards.

They have also started charging a 0.5% surcharge on australian visa (credit) transactions a few weeks ago and they very heavily publicised it. Lots of warnings. Banners everywhere. Emails. So that’s almost certain.

The title uses the spelling “VISA”. It's actually “Visa”, not all-caps.

That's interesting. It was always 'VISA' in the past, when did it become 'Visa'?

No, it seems like it was always “Visa”. See the scanned advertisement https://clickamericana.com/topics/money-work/visa-card-debut....

I'm just talking about the name in text. The logo has always been in all-caps.

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