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Amazon to stop accepting UK Visa credit cards

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Re: Amazon to stop accepting UK Visa credit cards

#511

Post by bradknowles »

Isthatablackgsd wrote: post #451
simfree wrote: post #399

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Note that this special relationship only likely applies to transactions that use the Amazon MasterCard on Amazon.com, and MasterCards issued by other companies still impose full rates. 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).

> 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). 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 cardh…

The reason I like AmEx is that they are much more customer friendly. But the things they do to be customer friendly also makes them less liked by companies.

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.

Re: Amazon to stop accepting UK Visa credit cards

#512

Post by psd1 »

Tycho wrote: post #503
Bayart wrote: post #467

Earlier quoted context omitted.

France has a completely different political structure and electoral system, and yet we've broadly seen the same phenomenon of the right wing's center of gravity always moving righter (is that even a word ?) and the left wing digging and splintering its way into irrelevance. The difference being that the electoral system produced a centrist rather than a populist (but in both cases Macron and BoJo are a pure product o…

The right wing moving righter? Hardly. It’s easy to see that politics has shifted drastically left. Political stances considered mainstream 30 years ago would end careers today. The so called “extreme right” Tory government, before the last reshuffle, had 3 of the 4 top government posts occupied by MPs from minority ethnicities. What you consider to be ‘moving righter’ is in fact just louder complaining due to the ac…

I think you're focusing on racism to the exclusion of all else.

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.

Re: Amazon to stop accepting UK Visa credit cards

#513

Post by kalleboo »

blibble wrote: post #508
gambiting wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm with Barclays and Lloyds, and neither can go into negative(well, technically they can I suppose, but it's extremely hard to do. Any debit card or direct debit transaction will just get declined if it's about to go below 0).

any offline transaction under your floor limit can put you into unauthorised overdraft e.g. a train ticket purchase from a guard using a mobile terminal

I haven't lived in Europe for a while but it used to be common to issue online-only debit cards (VISA Electron, Maestro etc) for this reason, have these fallen out of fashion?

Re: Amazon to stop accepting UK Visa credit cards

#514

Post by swarnie »

scatters wrote: post #449
swarnie wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Poor management on my part, i'd rather know its done and keep a watch on my spending day to day.

Which demonstrates that you in fact are bad with money, so the system is working as intended. If you don't trust yourself with day-to-day spending, why should a lender trust you with a loan representing months or years of income?

Oof.... OK mate.

Keeping an eye on my spending and borrowing on a daily basis is now a negative?

I assume you sit in the same camp that thinks i can afford £1400 monthly rent for 5 years but not an £800 mortgage yeah?

Re: Amazon to stop accepting UK Visa credit cards

#515

Post by tumetab1 »

Dah00n wrote: post #391
tumetab1 wrote: post #362

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To clarify, it seems that transactions costs vary a lot in the EU. I have the prices in Portugal for 2 terminal payments provider and I see lot of comissions around 2% which is strange because the EU states that the comissions are much lower. No idea what's going here.

Aren't you looking at the PoS fee instead of the VISA fee?

I think so, I was looking into the fees paid by merchants to accept a card payment on in a physical terminal.

Re: Amazon to stop accepting UK Visa credit cards

#516

Post by valzam »

tryptophan wrote: post #369
azalemeth wrote: post #110

I really don't get why we accept this de-facto tax on the world economy by US companies. Amex, Visa and Mastercard are all based in the US, and all charge a (nowadays) non-negotiable fee on selling anything. Cash has many problems, and clearly won't work for online purchases, but at least small business owners could pay their employees "out of the till" at the end of the week, bypassing bank transaction fees and a fa…

I wonder what will happen when fedNow goes live. https://www.frbservices.org/financial-services/fednow/about.... It will be a cheap/free, instant, money sending service. What will be the point of visa/mastercard/paypal then?

Australia has had instant, free interbank transfers for years now (PayID) but for some reason I have yet to see a business accept it at PoS and only very rarely for online purchases. The only business that seem to accept it are crypto and stock exchanges, to get your money in fast...

Re: Amazon to stop accepting UK Visa credit cards

#517

Post by chinathrow »

mrep wrote: post #315
chinathrow wrote: post #31

I'd love to see a drill down of how exact the credit card scheme works regarding fees. Like who is paid what exactly by whom. Is this somewhere available?

patio11 has articles on it. I would recommend the "How credit cards make money" one: https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=kalzumeus.com

Read that article, there is nothing on that, I would love to see real numbers.

Re: Amazon to stop accepting UK Visa credit cards

#518

Post by Cu3PO42 »

amaccuish wrote: post #494
Cu3PO42 wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ironically, an EC card these days is just a MasterCard. They used to be called EC (EuroCheque) card, but rebranded in 2007 when MasterCard was ousted from the system. MC kept the brand rights and didn't do anything with them for a decade. Meanwhile people kept using the old name. Now, however, MC started using the brand for some debit MasterCards, which can lead to great confusion by unsuspecting merchants. That said…

It's not just a MasterCard. There are still shops that will accept Maestro and not MasterCard. Further, some girocards, like mine, a V-Pay cards, Visa's equivalent, and not co-branded with Maestro.

Maestro is disjoint from MasterCard, this is correct. But it's also unrelated to what I said. You're right that many girocards are co-branded with Maestro and not MasterCards. However, they are not "EC cards".

Those cards that actually use the "ec" brand (rather than girocard) are proper debit MasterCards. You can see this on MasterCards German website [0]. Some banks are also using that branding to issue cards [1].

Beyond that, there are some girocards which are co-branded not with Maestro, but with MasterCard proper [2], although that is also unrelated to my previous statement.

[0] https://www.mastercard.de/de-de/mastercard-fuer-sie/finden-s...

[1] https://www.consorsfinanz.de/banking-service/kontakt/geld-ei...

[2] https://www.it-finanzmagazin.de/girocard-mit-co-badge-master...

Re: Amazon to stop accepting UK Visa credit cards

#519

Post by rlpb »

Closi wrote: post #493
rlpb wrote: post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> can't be overcharged, can't go below zero In the UK, it's really hard to get a bank account where they'll do that. Instead they'll pay it, call it an "unauthorised overdraft" and then charge you for that. This is their business model - it's how they make sufficient income to operate. There are "basic bank accounts" which don't provide a credit facility, but these only exist because people with poor credit histories…

> In the UK, it's really hard to get a bank account where they'll do that. I'm pretty sure all of them do, just ring up your bank and ask them to set your overdraft limit to 0 I've certainly done this with HSBC & Santander in the past, and when I got my Monzo account it was 0 by default (You had to sign up for an overdraft if you wanted one).

An overdraft limit of 0 just means that you end up in an unauthorised overdraft sooner.

Monzo might be an exception here.

Re: Amazon to stop accepting UK Visa credit cards

#520

Post by mbg721 »

effie wrote: post #506
mbg721 wrote: post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The way this works in the US is nuts. I had to get a parent to co-sign the loan for my first car (or else they wouldn't lend me money at any rate), but then I spent a year paying a monthly fee to borrow my own money with a "secured credit card" and instantly I'm good for 40 grand, apparently.

Isn't it completely rational from the lender standpoint? First they make sure you will be profitable for them (involve other people who can be milked), then they offer you money and hope you can't pay back on time.

I mean, maybe, but it didn't work; I'm one of those deadbeats who makes all the payments before they're due.
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