As of 19th January 2022, Visa Credit Cards will no longer be accepted by Amazon.com in the UK. There will be no change for Visa Debit Cards, these will still be accepted by the online retailer.
We know that this may be inconvenient for many of you and we’re here to help you through this transition.
UK shoppers can still use their Visa Credit and Debit Cards safely and securely at Amazon UK up until the 19th January 2022.
Rest assured, we are here to offer our support every step of the way.
This is happening because there is an interchange fee in place. Like other financial corporations, we have raised our interchange fee prices on cross-border transactions between the UK and the European Union following Brexit.
The interchange fee is an essential part of the payment process. When you make a card purchase, your bank sends your payment to the retailer’s bank (known as the acquiring bank), and when this happens, a small fee is retained. This is called the interchange fee. Find out more about Visa Interchange Fees and how they are determined.
You will still be able to use Visa Debit Cards to make purchases on Amazon, just as you would with your Visa Credit Card. Millions of people around the world have found, you can use Visa Debit everyday, everywhere, for everything. Find out more about the benefits of Visa Debit Cards.
We understand that this change may be inconvenient and we are here to provide our continued support. Visa still remains the most widely accepted form of payment in the UK, offering the best-in-class safety, security and global access for our customers.
If you need any additional help or guidance, please get in touch and we will work with you to adjust to this transition.
As announced by Amazon, this change is due to come into action from 19th January 2022 onwards.
Yes, this change will not affect payments made on Amazon.com through Visa Debit.
Whenever you buy something with your Visa card, four parties are involved: You, your bank, the retailer you buy from, and the retailer’s bank.
Both banks perform a series of steps to ensure your payment is processed and transferred securely, and it reaches the retailer promptly.
When your bank sends your payment to the retailer’s bank (known as the acquiring bank), a small fee is retained. This is called the interchange fee. Visa doesn’t receive any of this fee.
If interchange didn’t exist, your bank would find it difficult to cover the costs it incurs in operating your card services, such as fraud prevention, systems maintenance and customer call centres. If this were the case, your bank may stop investing in innovation, stop issuing cards altogether or increase the fees that you pay for its card services.
Similarly, when the retailer’s bank sends the payment to the retailer, it deducts a small fee – this is called the Merchant Service Charge and incorporates a number of component fees such as the interchange fee, costs to cover services provided by their bank, such as guaranteed payment, and the technology to accept card payments such as a terminal or contactless reader. This rate is negotiated directly between the retailer and its bank. Visa doesn't participate in this process.
The level of interchange, in most cases, is a small ad valorem percentage of the total transaction amount.
This fee is set by Visa and has traditionally varied by the type of transaction, the product involved and from country to country. From 9 December 2015, European regulation on interchange fees (Regulation (EU) 2015/751 of the European Parliament and of the European Council of 29 April 2015 on interchange fees for card-based transactions, “the IFR”) imposes interchange fee caps on most product types within the European Economic Area (EEA).
Interchange is used to help the payment system function quickly and securely:
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