Visa have put up UK-EU interchange fees (as post Brexit they're not covered by the cap)
But it affects Amazon because when you buy something from Amazon UK, you're billed by Amazon Luxembourg and Amazon UK then fulfil
Amazon's tax avoidance strategy is part of the reason the charge has increased for them.
If they billed from the UK it wouldn't affect them
But a curious note from that article: "The move to increase interchange fees will bring it into line with MasterCard, its rival payments group, which announced a similar move in January."
So why is Amazon restricting customers with Visa and not MasterCard?
Can't be the UK-EU Post-Brexit policy alone.
Costco ran into this with American Express, though in retrospect the move to Visa seems like a worse move (more non-Costco Visa cards in circulation).
I just want to stress that we both can only speculate.
Could you expand on it a worse move for Costco? I thought it was great they moved to Visa because majority of Americans does not have Amex for credit card. The only way we can use our Visa card is through debit card only. So by moving to Visa (they have largest cardholders than Amex/Discover in America), Costco gained more consumers so the consumers can use their Visa credit card without resorting to debit card. It helps me a lot because I don't and never have Amex. Amex don't have a lot of retailers coverage (they used to be popular back in the 80s/90s), same for Discover. I recalled Amex have higher transaction fees, I believe higher than Discover, and Amex explicitly disallow passing the fee to the consumers. So made sense retailers prefer Visa/MC because they have lower transaction fees. This is what I remember back in the day when Costco made this announcement.
They now accept any Mastercard. But most Canadians probably pay with Interac debit anyway.
You can pay with Visa online, but if you return to a store they hand you cash. It's really weird how anti-Visa Costco is in Canada.
I’ve been a CostCo member since at least 2006. I really liked the fact that they gave me an AmEx, but I didn’t really use it for anything other than CostCo.
About a year later, I discovered that you could use any major credit card to debit card to pay for your goods at CostCo, so long as you identified yourself with your CostCo branded card. I stopped using the CostCo branded card soon thereafter.
After they switched to Visa, I stopped going to CostCo pretty much entirely.
It wasn’t until the pandemic started that I went back to CostCo on a couple of occasions to buy some things that were not available elsewhere.
I’ve got enough Visa and MasterCards. I don’t need any more.
Not at all. These exclusive acceptance deals do usually have lower-than-otherwise rates for all cards from that issuer, though perhaps not as low as the co-branded card.
Think about it - if Costco had the same fees from a normal (not co-branded) Visa card as they did from a normal MasterCard, what incentive do they have to disallow normal MasterCards but still allow normal Visa cards?
Not really due to Brexit. Nice attempt at pushing your agenda though.
As the poster said - it is the gift that keeps on giving.
The UK is basically Mexico now. You saw how well their trade negotiations with the EU went; expect the US and China to walk all over them too.
The main power lever the UK has at this point on the global stage is the fact that its banks orchestrate and facilitate global money laundering at the intersection of corporations, organized crime and autocratic regimes. And is rapidly losing that role to crypto.
More like under half billion (~447.0 million).
>The UK is basically Mexico now
Except it has a much bigger more advanced economy and a ton of other differences but carry on with the hyperbole.
> The Netherlands and Germany are filling that role ...
Just recently Royal Dutch Shell just switched headquarters to UK from NL, maybe there are some advantages then.
> Was doing it off the top of my head
Any more facts you want to come up with from the top of your head? I think I'll just disregard the rest of your facts then.
I expect they will try to extend their advantage in the coming years by using "selective legislation" to encourage multinational corporations to re-home to the UK. See: Unilever and Shell. This is only the beginning in my view.
Trade deals are about power and taking the one for the EU as example because we (UK) need access to their markets more than they need access to ours then they always had the leverage
It'll be the same with US, China etc.
Even in the trade deals we've achieved with countries like New Zealand we've not been able to take advantage of being a larger economy and we've allowed lamb imports just to get a deal
It makes sense in theory, however, if I look at the actual changes where UK has now diverged from EU laws like this one, those changes seem bad for the UK public (in order to benefit e.g. banks), and it turns out this freedom for politicians to do whatever they want somehow results in even less accountability to the interests of British public than the unelected unaccountable Brussels officials cut off by Brexit. Sad.
Schools near me in (not UK) are struggling to feed students lunch because the companies they had contracted to deliver their food dont have enough drivers. One company a state over just cancelled their contract with nearly 60 rural schools because they simply aren't able to deliver.
As far as I've heard, the EU doesn't have these problems. It's only the UK. (I can't speak all the languages, but I asked friends from Denmark, Germany, Portugal, Spain and Italy if they'd seen reports of shortages in supermarkets and restaurants, but none have.)
The American problem looks fixable with vaccination, testing etc. A lot of drivers in Britain left the country, and there isn't a short-term fix.
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/27/us/politics/schools-labor...
For example, https://www.ft.com/content/e8ca2a08-308c-4324-8ed2-d788b074a...
Driver shortages have been reported across the EU, but as far as I'm aware, food and fuel shortages are only in the UK.
e.g. https://trans.info/en/there-s-a-europe-wide-hgv-driver-short...
There's none of that in France, at least not for every day consumer goods. The prices of energy however have skyrocketed and semi-conductors are as lacking as anywhere else.
There's a shortage all across Europe, but as far as I have heard it's only in the UK where it's sufficient to cause problems with food distribution.
(Natural gas prices have reduced food production in the Netherlands: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-09-30/your-toma... but would we have seen the result of that yet?)
> The great British public still have their heads in the sand in the wake of lorry driver shortages, nursing staff shortages and doctor shortages.
Restaurants open or closed is a luxury; /care
Some food not available, might be a luxury, but the vids I've seen were quite shocking.
So we don't actually have a choice, our politics are as rigged as American politics. A small cabal pick the two PM choices, and we have to pick between bad or worse.
The first-past-the-post electoral system has no defense against well-funded interests essentially buying all the candidates.
One could wonder if the substandard electoral system exists purely because of this flaw (or feature for the few powerful).
I don't think different systems differ so much as far as being rigged goes, it's just the rigging that changes. In the end, power is always in the process of cooptation.
The dynamics are same prior to runoff because the plurality electoral system gives no representation to the majority that didn't vote for the winner (almost a given since there will be >2 candidates).
You'd need proportional representation and/or an electoral system like Borda,RCV,Star or instant runoff to significantly proof against spoiler mechanics that the wealthy can exploit.
Again, none of these measures guarantees against money corrupting electoral processes, just makes it more costly and unsure that any given corruptive effort pays off.
Britain has sold off vast swathes of housing stock and is privatising ever more healthcare delivery. Zero-hour contracts are a thing nowadays. Industries that most countries run as a public service have been privatised.
Collectivism has been replaced with neoliberalism. Our country has swung miles to the right both socially and fiscally. But yes, you can be out and brown.