Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN) disclosed that it has decided not to ban UK-issued Visa Credit cards. The change which the company has announced will no longer happen on 19 January regarding the use of Visa (V) credit cards on its UK site. Earlier, in November last year, Amazon disclosed that it will ban payments by the UK-issued Visa credit cards due to high fees charged to process transactions.
But Amazon confirmed today that it was working closely with Visa on a possible solution that will allow customers to continue using their Visa credit cards on Amazon.co.uk. The decision of Amazon to ban credit cards of Visa was expected to hit millions of Brits. It was projected that 89% of UK households shop at Amazon and the company’s subscription service, Amazon Prime, has nearly 21 million UK subscribers.
Furthermore, an email to customers on Amazon confirmed that it will warn the customer if it decides to put a ban. Until then, customers have the chance to continue to use Visa credit cards, debit cards, Mastercard, American Express, and Eurocard as they do today. Previously, Visa enhanced interchange fees from mid-October, which means the fees of 0.20% for debit cards and 0.30% for credit cards surged to 1.15% and 1.50%, respectively.
In addition, the interchange rate for business cards is now 1.60%, while corporate and buying cards have been changed to 1.80%. This decision of Visa has forced Amazon to decide to ban UK-issued Visa Credit cards.