France in Focus

Genuine email from everyone's favourite multinational retailer:

"We’re writing to notify you of an upcoming change to Amazon.co.uk.

Starting 19 January, 2022, we will unfortunately no longer accept Visa credit cards issued in the UK, due to the high fees Visa charges for processing credit card transactions. You can still use debit cards (including Visa debit cards) and non-Visa credit cards like Mastercard, Amex, and Eurocard to make purchases. Please update your default payment method now, or add one of these new, eligible payment methods if you do not have one."


Charging Amazon high fees.....................

Interestingly, in the UK, both Nat West & First Direct banks changed from Visa debit cards to Master Card a month or so ago.

Seems lots of places are not happy with Visa.

As I recall VISA Europe was sold off a few years back - looks like the new owners want some money back!

edit - there is more going on here - Amex charge much higher fees that Visa.

No links on the "genuine" e mail to direct you to somewhere you can make the necessary default changes?

https://www.msn.com/en-gb/money/other/a ... d=msedgntp

Oh Ye of no faith whatsoever, Hugh.

The lack of links should actually be reassuring that this is not a scam

Just read on guardian online that amazon uk is stopping visa credit cards Jan 2022 due to the card costs, they will accept visa debit cards and other credit cards.

hughnique wrote: ↑Wed Nov 17, 2021 12:26 pm No links on the "genuine" e mail to direct you to somewhere you can make the necessary default changes?

It would be pretty difficult for them to supply links. I have just logged into my 3 Amazon accounts and made the switch manually. I removed Paypal payments from Visa credit card about a month ago. I'm assuming I can still use Visa credit card in shops here.

I would hold fire - I sense this is a shot across the bows, so to speak, to get Visa to negotiate revised (i.e. lower) charges.

1% of something is better than 2% of nothing.

My payment when ordering an OBD2 reader on Amazon.de didn't get the approval from Visa, an automatically generated message by Amazon Germany. My Visa account mentioned a payment of € 0 for this order, without any clarification. Never happened before. So I paid with my EU bank account 30 minutes later, no problems. Delivery by DHL as promised after two days, not late in the afternoon/early evening hours but in the morning.

Trench warfare going on between these two?

This is interesting and something I've feared for some time. On Saturday, I used my Nationwide card to withdraw cash to give as a present (I use my UK pension for such fripperies). €50 and I was charged €5 commisssion. I haven't yet had the time to discover who the fiver is going to....