Money expert Martin Lewis has laid out how Brexit has led to Amazon no longer accepting Visa Credit cards on its site from January.
Yesterday it was announced that the ecommerce giant will stop accepting payments made using the card due to “the high fees Visa charges for processing credit card transactions”.
Customers will still be able to use debit cards, including Visa, and non-Visa credit cards, it said.
Cost
An Amazon spokesman said: “The cost of accepting card payments continues to be an obstacle for businesses striving to provide the best prices for customers.
“These costs should be going down over time with technological advancements, but instead they continue to stay high or even rise.
“As a result of Visa’s continued high cost of payments, we regret that Amazon.co.uk will no longer accept UK-issued Visa credit cards as of January 19 2022.
“With the rapidly changing payments landscape around the world, we will continue innovating on behalf of customers to add and promote faster, cheaper, and more inclusive payment options to our stores across the globe.”
Brexit
Tweeting about the announcement, Martin Lewis said the decision was made by Amazon because Visa is increasing transaction rates now the EU cap no longer applies in the UK post-Brexit.
Visa last month began charging 1.5 per cent of the transaction value for credit card payments made online or over the phone between the UK and EU, and 1.15 per cent for debit card transactions, up from 0.3 per cent and 0.2 per cent respectively.
A report from the British Retail Consortium and retail payments advisory firm CMS Payments Intelligence has found that new rules after Brexit have increased credit and debit card costs by £150 million a year.
Reaction
Lewis wasn’t the only person to notice the role Brexit has had to play in the whole debacle.
Here’s a pick of the reaction elsewhere.
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