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Comment by lifeisstillgood | Hacker News Reader

This was a fascinating piece of bluff calling by Amazon. I honestly expected Visa to hold their ground and let Amazon refuse to accept payment for millions of people.

Edit: fair enough, I do not know if Amazon or Visa caved. I simply assumed Visa would. Then again it was Amazon threatening, so the only way for the world to know if Visa held on, is for Visa to hold on till Jan 19. At the moment we can assume both pulled back, or Amazon "won". Only once Jan 19 passes could we assume Amazon caved.

Edit: Amazon UK has 15 Million Prime subscribers, and visa has ~ 80% market share in UK, so I am happy to say "millions" of people would at least have to scrabble and update their purchase settings. It would be disruptive to amazon - but the total cost?

https://dontdisappoint.me.uk/resources/technology/amazon-sta...

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> visa has ~ 80% market share in UK

What is this statistic measuring? Number of adults who have some form of Visa card? Number of transactions in total? Online transactions? Debit and credit cards combined? If you're able to provide more detail that would be useful.

According to the industry, debit card usage far outstrips credit card usage, at a ratio of about 3:1 for online purchases[0] - and debit cards were unaffected by Amazon's proposed change. So if we assume the 3:1 ratio holds true for Amazon customers, then we're looking at an absolute maximum of 15m/4 == 3.75 million customers - i.e. if all of them are paying with Visa.

Five years ago it was reported that MasterCard had 65% of UK credit card market[1]. If we assume that hasn't shifted much, and ignore Amex and other issuers (i.e. granting Visa a generous 35% market) then we end up at 3.75m*0.35 = 1.31 million customers, or about 8.7% of Prime subscribers. A big and valuable chunk, to be sure - and obviously Amazon's customer base could well skew towards Visa for some reason or other - but to me it still isn't anywhere near as dramatic as "Visa has ~80% market share" implies.

[0] https://www.ukfinance.org.uk/sites/default/files/uploads/Car...

[1] https://cmspi.com/eur/blogs/competition-in-the-debit-card-is...

https://www.statista.com/statistics/1116580/payment-card-sch...

I think transaction share (ie number of swipes).

The main issue for me is that its a big number - Amazon and Visa will have much more detailed models, but the direction of travel is the same - will people swap to Mastercard or just not buy?

That question seems absurd. Of course they'll just get a Mastercard if they don't already have one. The U.K. is full of neobanks that will give you one on your phone in 5 minutes.

When not all banks supported Apple Pay here in Australia I would occasionally have people quite interested in paying with their phone after seeing me do it or hearing me talk about not carrying a wallet. I'd direct them to the two neobanks I use and told them they could be paying with their phone in two minutes. All lost interest.

There is better protection on credit card transactions so like many people I use credit card for online and debit card for contactless, and cash never.

I really doubt there are millions of us that chose to pay on Amazon with Visa Credit Cards, here in UK.

It's anyone with a HSBC or Barclaycard credit card, so probably quite a lot of people

People who care enough about that sort of thing have Amex reward cards too which Amazon would still accept.

People who don't care enough would normally have been OK paying with their Visa Debit which they will usually also have as an HSBC or Barclays retail customer...

Except it's hammered home in the UK to use credit cards for online purchases where possible for Section 75 protection as well as if the card details are involved in a breach you don't have your bank account emptied and can't pay your bills.

Section 75 in particular has a lot of attention in the UK because over the last 4 years a lot of businesses have gone bust, and people who paid by bank transfer or debit card were shafted, receiving pennies on the pound (if that).

Why? Are Visa credit cards not as common there as they are in the US?

Norm in the UK amongst most banks/card issuers these days seems to be either Visa or Mastercard Debit and Mastercard Credit. Out of all the meaningful issuers that I know of, only Barclaycard and HSBC issue Visa Credit, with everyone else issuing Mastercard (or Amex, which targets a different kind of users).

Yeah, pretty much most cards you get now are MasterCard I assume due to Visa fees.

> I really doubt there are millions of us that chose to pay on Amazon with Visa Credit Cards, here in UK.

Not sure where you're coming from? Many (most?) UK retail banks use VISA for their card card network. I have VISA cards from HSBC, Barclays, MBNA, etc... In fact I didn't have anything else so I got a new AmEx when they said they were stopping accepting VISA.

Those are debit cards, are they not? Which Amazon were still going to accept.

No all credit cards.

HSBC and Barclaycard I agree, but your MBNA experience is the opposite of mine - they closed my Visa and, I thought, completely went to Mastercard!

Regarding the overall proportion, when the Amazon announcement was originally made Which? listed all the retail banks and other card issuers. MasterCard far outstrips Visa at a ratio of 3:1 (15 to 5): https://www.which.co.uk/news/2021/11/amazons-visa-credit-car...

I went to look and looks like the MBNA product I have isn't available to the general public (not sure why - I'm not some kind of big shot.)

https://www.headforpoints.com/2018/05/31/mbna-offering-uks-b...

My HSBC Debit card is Visa.

This whole thread is about credit cards. If your cards from HSBC etc are debit cards then nothing in the thread applies to you.

You are arguing that all Visa cards in UK are credit cards. My DEBIT card is Visa. So is my credit card. Both from HSBC.

> You are arguing that all Visa cards in UK are credit cards.

No where did you read that? It's not true that all VISA cards in the UK are credit cards. It's just that only credit cards are relevant here.

> My DEBIT card is Visa.

Again... this thread is about credit cards, not debit cards. Nobody's talking about debit cards.

> Then again it was Amazon threatening, so the only way for the world to know if Visa held on, is for Visa to hold on till Jan 19. At the moment we can assume both pulled back, or Amazon "won"

I don't see how that follows. Amazon has an interest in not irritating its customers and losing sales (just because most people own other cards doesn't mean everyone will update, especially not for recurring billing like Prime subs), and just as much interest in resolving that before Jan 19 if Visa wouldn't cave as Visa if Amazon wouldn't. Just because they threatened doesn't mean they couldn't have internal forecasts suggesting that following through on the threat would be worse for business than accepting what was already on the table.

Do you know that Visa have backed down and not Amazon? Can you share any info? I wasn't able to find any details of the deal.

My guess is that Visa caved and that it was the plan.

My rationale for this guess is that everyone in the UK who has a Visa credit card also has, at the very least, a Visa or Mastercard debit card. So this was going to make people change payment method but I doubt was going to make them stop buying from Amazon.

I am exactly in that case and, like many, a Prime subscriber. I would have just changed card on Amazon and my use of my Visa credit card would have dropped 80%.

Let's face it no-one was going to drop Amazon because of this and they knew it. In the UK Amazon sells $26 billion of stuff annually.

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