Online retailer Amazon announced on Wednesday that it will refuse to accept credit cards issued by Visa in the UK from January next year on the grounds that Visa charges too high a handling fee. In an interview with the Financial Times, Al Kelly, the executive president of Visa, refuted Amazon’s false accusations and expected that the dispute would eventually be resolved.
Al Kelly described Amazon’s actions as “abrupt” and “inappropriate”: “It is clear that our (two companies) negotiations are very challenging. The difference is that Amazon suddenly decided to make the negotiations public and strangely threatened to punish consumers. Amazon used 20 pounds to “encourage” consumers to abandon Visa credit card payments, and threatened to consider abandoning Visa as its partner in launching co-branded cards in the United States.
Kenneth Suchoski, an analyst at the research company Autonomous, said in a report that he was not shocked by Amazon’s actions, because this is Amazon’s habitual tactics. Every effort must be made to reduce the cost of processing payments, and the incident is not expected to happen to Visa. Any major impact.
An Amazon spokesperson said on the same day that Visa has continuously increased prices over the years but has not improved its services. Al Kelly retorted, surprised by the accusation, because “absolutely does not match the facts.”
The Financial Times quoted the Swedish electronic payment company Bambora as saying that the transaction fees of MasterCard and Visa in the UK are almost the same. The two companies also raised the exchange fee for online purchases between the UK and the EU after the UK’s decision to leave the European Union earlier this year; card-free electronic payments with debit cards increased from 0.2% to 1.15%, and credit cards increased from 0.3% Increase to 1.5%. Al Kelly pointed out that most of the exchange fee income is not owned by Visa: “In an unregulated market, we have a responsibility to set a fee, but we never get support. If the fee is reduced, financial institutions will be dissatisfied, and merchants will be upset if the fee is increased. “
An Amazon spokesperson pointed out that, as a retailer with a large amount of user data, Amazon has invested huge resources to protect customers from fraud, but Visa’s further charges for this are unreasonable.
