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Subject: Visa credit cards will not be accepted, starting 19 Jan, 2022
Date: Wed, 17 Nov 2021 09:15:34 +0000
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This should not be a thing.
The email formatting was so shite, I'm pretty sure any savvy reader assumed it was pishing (even though the URL appears legit).
99% of debit cards are Visa, and most people buying stuff on Amazon would be using a debit card, folks only really use credit cards for large purchases and things like travel, here.
Even when it comes to credit cards, I would say Mastercard has like a large chunk - like 80% in terms of institutions (but who knows in terms of actual customers), I would say.
Barclays and HSBC are the only majors that do Visa as far as I know. And Vanquis which is a junky one for people with bad credit.
The other majors like Lloyds, TSB, Bank Of Scotland, Halifax, Natwest, RBS, are all Mastercard. Same with most smaller banks like Virgin and CapitalOne, and store branded ones like Sainsburys/M&S/Tesco, too, as well as the remainder of the popular bad-credit cards like Ocean, and Aqua. Mastercard.
Huh? I'm in the UK, have been an Amazon customer for over 20 years and have always used a credit card for everything. I didn't even know you could use a debit card, and can't see any reason you'd want to. Paid off in full every month, better consumer protection, what's not to like?
Nothing to pay off, you're spending your own money, can't be overcharged, can't go below zero, if someone leaks your spending card they can't touch the majority of your money, no scummy business practices.
Never owned a credit card, don't have the slightest wish to do so.
In the UK, it's really hard to get a bank account where they'll do that. Instead they'll pay it, call it an "unauthorised overdraft" and then charge you for that. This is their business model - it's how they make sufficient income to operate.
There are "basic bank accounts" which don't provide a credit facility, but these only exist because people with poor credit histories can't get bank accounts otherwise, and the regulator has threatened to enforce their availability otherwise. However since this means that there currently isn't any rule, the banks make it very difficult for an ordinary person (with good credit) to open a "basic bank account".
More information here: https://researchbriefings.files.parliament.uk/documents/SN03...
And a Supreme Court decision here: https://www.supremecourt.uk/cases/docs/uksc-2009-0070-judgme...
I'm pretty sure all of them do, just ring up your bank and ask them to set your overdraft limit to 0
I've certainly done this with HSBC & Santander in the past, and when I got my Monzo account it was 0 by default (You had to sign up for an overdraft if you wanted one).
Monzo might be an exception here.
I own a credit card, as you get additional consumer protections using a credit card rather than a debit card in the UK.
Pay it off in full every month. No problem.
Some banks offer similar things on debit cards, but it's always at the banks discretion rather than required by law.
Indeed if say an IT problem occurs and they can't do that transfer under UK law they eat the fees incurred. "The customer must be made whole".
As to fees, the merchant doesn't have to accept cards, as we see with Amazon, if they don't like the fees. Why should ordinary consumers care? When we were part of the EU the cards couldn't charge excessive fees, now Brexit allowed them to unlock this potential source of profit.
Never paid a penny in fees or interest in over 15 years.... and an annual statement of fees (issued by law) informs me of this fact each year.
I write 'real' since most of the FinTechs like Revolut, N26 etc often issue debit cards that may fail in exactly that situation. It doesn't help if your account is flush with 10k USD and a car rental could easily block 2k for claims on your debit card, some will just not accept Revolut & co. Thus I am always forced to carry an emergency backup credit card from a major bank just to be on the safe side...
Very much looking forward to the day some other means of international payment (crypto?) will be generally accepted.
Banks and debit providers also do ID checks, as required by law, but don't check anywhere near as hard, since there is no way to steal money from the bank if your account can't go negative.
Bizarrely, never owning a credit card will negatively impact your credit rating.
When somebody does a credit check on you they don’t get a score, only a remark on whether that person has done any negative with respect to their credit worthiness. Thus there is really only the negatives which count.
Credit reference agencies instead report credit history.
The difference is a subtle but very important one, as it allows companies to assess your individual circumstances, rather than base decisions on an arbitrary score.
The above misunderstanding is so commonplace that the Redit UKPersoanlFinace sub had (has?) a bot explaining this on every UK post mentioning 'credit score'. Here "credit scores" are instead a marketing gimmick launched by credit reference agencies to get consumers to subscribe to monitoring services. The 'score' they give is meaningless.
https://blog.moneysavingexpert.com/2021/06/martin-lewis-cred...
By the same logic credit scores don’t exist in the US either. It’s just an approximation, your bank still makes their own decisions.
I had this issue, and had to get a credit card and buy stuff on it for a year... basically without using credit you may not have a credit rating.
I always lose my cards and have to get them replaced, so have been back on just a debit card for a few years now.
Only since then have I actually had anything on my credit report (monthly broadband payment, phone contract, monthly car insurance payment because I didn't want to keep paying the whole 3k up front every year after moving out, etc) and despite that the score has remained unchanged.
In our case, the bank required a savings account containing a 10% deposit in the name of a family member, which is returned to them with interest after 3 years (unless you fall into arrears). ~50% of that money was our own savings and the rest was from parents savings, which allowed us to get on the property ladder with ~1yr less saving and no cost to our families after the 3yr period.
I had to get a credit card as mortgage got denied because my credit record didn't exist. Three months after the card, I got approved.
This is despite me earning an extravagant wage relative to my age for over a decade and never missing rent/utilities/council tax.
Bad system.
It isn't that a lack of credit card hurts your credit rating, but that a lack of any credit hurts your credit rating in Canada or the US.
There are other ways to get an initial credit rating than a credit card, although I agree that this is the path most easy, and chosen by many to get that first rating.
The method I employed, was to buy a car and had a parent cosign. I made all the payments, and this was enough to kick start, and give me at good credit rating.
I also didn't say 'you need a credit card to get a good credit score', I said not having one will negatively impact your score. This is 100% correct; Your credit score is made up of various metrics on how you manage debt, one of which is credit cards. You will get a % boost if you have a card that you manage well, whereas without a credit card, you will get no boost at all in that category. Granted, you may make up for it overall in other categories, but in the main, for most people, my statement still stands. Credit scores start at 0, and only improve if you show you can manage debt across multiple products.
Credit bureaus are definitely legislatively controlled here, and court decisions have an effect on them too.
That aside, I didn't say low utilisation, I said no utilisation. This has a good chance of your card being cancelled by the card issuer, which has a negative effect on your credit.
Bottom line is, unless you plan to use the card, there are better methods of increasing your credit score, so it's not a good idea to get one.
If you got approved for $40k, there's something else funny going on.
But it's true that in the era of negative interest rates, only silly people don't owe money.
Not going into debt unnecessarily is a great thing, but it's not a data point in your favour, it's the absence of a data point.
https://www.which.co.uk/money/mortgages-and-property/mortgag...
Neither are truly unsecured. It just takes longer than an outright repossession because it takes two or three court claims instead of just one.
The debt collection industry relies on this, and regularly forces sales of property to pay back CC and other debts.
So CCs are disastrous for people who can't pay their debts. Not only are the interest rates extortionate, but for lenders they're almost as safe as a secured loan. And because of the high rates they can be considerably more profitable.
I have to spend everything on a credit card, then when i get home from shopping 45 minutes later go and pay it off using a debt card.
Its so unfriendly for the consumer.
Keeping an eye on my spending and borrowing on a daily basis is now a negative?
I assume you sit in the same camp that thinks i can afford £1400 monthly rent for 5 years but not an £800 mortgage yeah?
You are aware that interest rates have been incredibly low for years? They have to go up to keep a lid on inflation, and the BoE needs to be able to do that without worrying about mortgage borrowers being overstretched.
What do you mean debit card for receiving money? In what sense?
>> Automated payment from the 1st one to the 2nd one
Again, I have absolutely no idea what you mean by that. Payment from a debit card to a debit card? What?
Seems like a lot of work to do what CCs do automatically. I guess the upside is that crazy spending is impossible (well, if you make sure to forbid negative balances on the spending account) and it's impossible to accrue interest.
I'm unaware of a UK bank that will let you do this, so...
Monzo's own help pages explicitly state that your balance can go into the negative, because offline debit card payments will not be rejected. They'll also gladly take you into the negative if you owe them money (e.g. through a Monzo Plus or Premium sub, or use their Flex service).
Search Monzo help for "Unarranged Overdrafts".
As far as I'm aware, there is no UK bank that will guarantee they will reject all payments and never let you go into a negative balance on a debit card transaction. This is also a profit centre for them, so there's little motivation to actually do so.
https://monzo.com/help/overdrafts-loans/unauthorised-overdra...
e.g. a train ticket purchase from a guard using a mobile terminal
they were very easy to spot as they didn't have the raised digits (for the imprinting machine... old fashioned offline transaction)
now they're coming back again, but still not super common
Keep your primary account for getting paid, and for covering bills, then load up the second account with play money for the month.
I know a few people who do this.
I just use an AmEx account but it's a little frustrating that you can't set a spending limit on the card.
You now have perks, points, insurance, consumer protection and still zero worries.
https://www.americanexpress.com/uk/credit-cards/all-cards/?i...
> I see no real reason why to use Amex over Visa or Master/Maestro
Cashback/rewards, and it's accepted on Amazon in the UK after this year is a really good reason to use it over Visa at least. Maestro is non-existant in the UK. Maybe mastercard is a better choice, but I carry two cards _anyway_ , so one might as well be an Amex, and the second should be a mastercard?
> Majority of hotels around Europe don't accept it, same with restaurants, small business, shops
I completely disagree. Almost every restaurant, hotel, cafe takes it. All major airlines accept them, the major train operators accept them, the major hotel booking sites and airbnb both accept it.
> there is not a single reason to own one in Europe, even with cashback (cashback to what actually, since i cannot use it anywhere)
Well there is, cashback, and contrary to what you're saying it _is_ usable in europe. You can book a flight with Ryanair, a train on trainline, hire a car via hertz/sixt/europcar, book a stay with airbnb/booking/hotels, and eat out in restaurants and local cafes all with an amex.
Everyone is paying for the perks, since prices are the same for everyone, but only the people with a credit card are getting them.
You're paying for their perks every time you buy with a debit card - it's madness to use debit.
That said, I do get annual cashback of 1% on one of my cards.
I've have some credit card debt, none of it carries any interest. When I buy appliances or furniture I usually take the interest free financing despite having the ability to pay. Why pay a few grand today when you can spread that out interest free for 2 years and let that value appreciate? I would have lost out on tons of money if I had sold investments up front to buy those goods. So instead of getting rid of all that money a year ago, I got 30% gains in the market.
I can’t even begin to imagine how you could see this as an advantage. It’s really not.
I have the majority of my net worth invested at one of my brokers and I tend to hold minimal cash in my bank account...better to be invested than hold cash these days.
...and can't get a mortgage and buy a house because you have no credit score.
No idea where the card is now, but the credit systems seemed to become aware of me after that.
It is possible some people could have so little credit history that having a card for a while might be beneficial. I don't know enough about the system to be sure, so maybe I was being a bit flippant, for which I apologise.
If you have proof of income you're going 90% of the distance.
In the US, 2%+ on all purchases (either directly or through points) is pretty standard. Going up to 5%+.
But I know this can be very different in other countries. I believe Japan has little to no incentives?
Well, the predatory business model, for one. The reason your credit card company can offer you "better consumer protection" and other benefits is because they count on a percentage of people not paying off their debt in time (and thus making more money out of them).
Also, I personally wouldn't want "better consumer protection" to be mediated by a private company. That should just be the default.
(Although the time my debit card did get stolen somehow, my bank did refund out of goodwill presmably becuase they didn't want to lose a customer).
https://www.which.co.uk/consumer-rights/regulation/section-7...
You’re confused - in the UK the better consumer protection with a credit card is the law. On debit cards it’s at their discretion.
In bits of Europe where it's allowed (like here in Denmark), it's not unusual for shops to add a percentage to the total for payments by local credit card, business credit card and/or foreign credit card. I haven't yet seen a shop with a different price for cash vs debit cards.
The appeal of credit cards is higher volume - more purchases because people can put it on credit, it’s more convenient, etc. That’s why you’ll see even roadside fruit stands offer credit card payments.
Plus stores are in competition with each other (to varying degrees). Some will choose to absorb the entire 2% or a part of it since, in their mind, it’s a net positive trade off.
It’s like saying a 5% increase in property taxes are just passed through as a rent increase. It all depends on the market. The right answer is something between 0-100% is passed through.
1. (As everyone says) consumer protection. I can dispute a charge to a CC and am not standing out the cash (unlike debit)
2. Debit transactions don't have any inherent limit. The bank might flag a very large transaction but once a debit transaction is underway it can't be stopped. I had > £10k stolen from my online account via a debit transaction and though the bank made good, still, bad taste.
3. Most important if you are young - using (and paying off) credit card will improve your credit score which helps you when you do need the credit.
4. Delayed payment. Even when you clear your debt every month you're still getting the benefit of 30 days free credit on your purchases. In our current savings-rate environment this is somewhat moot but anyone who travels for work or has significant work expenses that they have to wait to get reimbursed for will find this a major feature. Lending your employer money really sucks.
5. Rewards cards. These have gone crappy over the last decade but if you are in a role where you have significant work expenses or where you put most of your expenditure through the CC it can be worthwhile to hunt around for and switch cards for deals. Spending £1000 at Amazon/year on a debit card will get you exactly £0 in rewards. Even 1% cashback would be worth having.
The only downside to CC's I see is that some people can't trust themselves with credit - they'll spend up to their limit and get into a spiral of debt. If you don't do that, they're better than debit cards in my opinion.
1) I've been able to dispute payments on my debit cards without any issue, they were always reversed instantly by the bank. Maybe I've been lucky, I don't know. And for the "bank is liable for your purchases" thing - that doesn't apply to anything under £100 either.
2) That is a stupid limitation of UK banks, not debit cards in general. I have a bank account in Poland and for the debit cards with that bank I can set individual limits for internet transactions, terminal payments, CNP(card not present) transactions as well as ATM withdrawals - with separate daily/monthly/temporary limits. Why British banks don't implement this is unfathomable to me.
3) I suppose, I have no comment on this really.
4) yes, but then you need to remember to pay it off and how much exactly, which is a bit of a pain if you have your daily spending mixed in with bigger purchases that you want to pay off over a longer period of time.
5) Again, personal experience - other than 0% interest on purchases, never had a credit card in the UK with any rewards whatsoever.
And yeah, it's not about downsides of CCs - it's just that when I pay for my daily shopping with my debit card it's out of my account, I know how much I have to work with at any given time, done. As I said elsewhere, I can't be arsed to work out it if my spending is spread across multiple accounts and different forms of credit.
I used to fly to New York in first for free once a year on my reward points before COVID.
The only exception where I'd prefer a debit card is in very rare cases when there's an additional fee for using a credit card. That's usually for large sums and/or international payments though, in which case I tend to use a specialised FX company or Revolut. My normal debit card is literally the last card I ever use, when all else fails or is more expensive.
What is this unicorn you speak of...? :) jk, I know some exist, I've just been irrationally faithful to a bank that probably does not deserve it anymore (coop)...
(But I keep my savings in an account that offsets against my mortgage, so I'm effectively getting a similar deal in practice by not accruing interest on that.)
You can be dinged both for having credit and not using it in a given month, as well as exceeding a certain threshold (~10%?) of your credit limit.
So yeah, I don't think I care too much about my credit rating at all, it doesn't seem to be affected by this in the sligtest.
Also worth noting Credit Karma uses TransUnion which is only one of the big three rating agencies, and arguably the least important compared to Equifax and Experian.
This is just as anecdotal as GP or indeed myself. I never use a debit card and don't know anybody that uses them other than for getting cash out of an ATM
For info: the debit & credit cards from my bank look almost identical. The only difference is one says "credit" in small black text. My credit card handles exactly like my debit card in terms of tap-and-pay etc. I just wouldn't use it to take out cash from an ATM, but then I can't remember when I last needed to do that.
But why? The credit card is strictly better isn't it? I thought the main reason people used debit cards was that they got one automatically with their checking account and just never bothered to apply for a CC, but that's not the issue for you.
And yes, it can be easily worked out but I guess I just can't be arsed. And for purchases under £100, credit cards offer no additional protection whatsoever, so for my daily shopping I'd just be making my life more difficult for no reason.
They offer better protection against fraudulent charges though? If your card gets skimmed it doesn't matter whether you were paying £5 or £5000.
This means for example if you buy a flight and the airline goes out of business, your credit card provider will need to refund you. Also if goods are faulty, you now have two possibilities to get your money back - and the credit card companies are usually more amenable.
What exactly can a credit card do better than this?
the key difference is with the debit card it's your money that's been stolen, whereas with a credit card it's the bank's money
Is there ever a situation that you can use a credit card but not a debit card? There are occasionally places that only accept debit cards, but I think the only time I've had a debit card refused was when hiring a car.
Hotels will sometimes do the same for a room night plus potential minibar charges.
The pre-auth gets released when you make the payment at the end of the car rental period.
The amount is (temporarily) deducted from my available balance when I use a debit card, just like it is deducted from the credit limit when I use a credit card.
https://www.ukfinance.org.uk/data-and-research/data/cards/ca...
£16.9bn on credit, £61bn on debit.
I suspect credit card spending is much more popular than you are suggesting due to consumer credit act protections and cashback offers.
Come on, Hacker News. You are supposed to be better than this — repeated discussions with the same "but in Europe" "I've do X so Y doesn't happen" comments is why I stopped reading Slashdot.
I've downvoted several anecdotes in this discussion. They contribute nothing to the discussion.
Most people in the uk chase points and credit cards have much better points and bonus' than debits.
This is delusional - the British have as many credit cards as people, £56.5 billion on credit cards, and 40% of credit card transactions were contactless, so certainly not large purchases.
Feels like a lot of places are shunning Visa at the moment.
Other than getting a new card number (which some could say is a GOOD thing) switching from Visa to Mastercard in the UK has hardly any impact as 99% of places accept both.
Not quite that bad. In 2019 it was 82% visa 17% mc
and since there has been a move towards mastercard. My main bank, FirstDirect switched my debit card over this year. I also use Wise which is also with mastercard.
If they try to shaft both sides, then they'll simply lose market share.
I worked in credit card payments (on acquiring side).
Any market share advantage between Visa and Mastercard is very, very fragile. It is basically your choice which card to pull out for payment.
It is also why Visa and Mastercard these are so alike almost in every aspect. When one does something, the other copies it.
The only reason this is still split between two companies is exactly because of this parity between products. People have no reason to prefer one over other and simply toss a coin to make their choice.
When I had chance to configure my phone to do NFC payments, my bank supported it only for Mastercard, so I configured Mastercard and that's how it is now. I know a lot of people got Mastercard because here (in Poland) it was tiny bit faster than Visa.
If Amazon bans UK Visa, people will not stop using Amazon. They will either pull out the other card or grumble for couple of days and get Mastercard.
It is likely Visa has NO negotiation power here. They are the ones that have commoditized themselves and are easily replaceable for their competitor. It is likely Amazon is well aware of this and this is just a show of strength that will be followed by Visa submitting to it because they have no choice.
The main motivation for this is to make payment technology transparent to the user (as in use any card anywhere, expect similar behavior, etc.) A lot of this is standardized so much that it is virtually the same for both.
And I know this, because it was my job to implement these standards. I calculated some 17 thousand pages of specifications in various forms.
Both Visa and Mastercard gain a lot form this because it is not a zero-sum game. Because of this cooperation people have been steadily increasing their use of credit card payments and this I think created a lot more revenue than they could have ever created for themselves by winning a cutthroat competition.
Re: Mastercard
It seems that Mastercard is more widespread among "hot" banking startups, ie I can create virtual debit Mastercards on Revolut and Monzo
They were definitely first in this space but Revolut has issued Visa's (in some cases) for a while now, and for instance Wise has recently switched from MasterCard to Visa entirely.
(MC taking less of a cut of the final fees then Visa, so the banks getting a higher precentage of the fees then they would have sticking with Visa. Lets say MC gave away 5% of their cut to the banks, keeping 95% of the your slice of the pie when you are processing more pies is more than 100% of your slice of fewer pies if you get what I mean).
If you force cash and credit card transactions to be the same price then the extra 0.5% is charged to everyone, and outside of extreme cases like this post there is little incentive for credit card operators to lower their fee.
I live in the Netherlands and biggest supermarket chain here, Albert Heijn, is strictly Mastro-only. This is not a problem for the locals, but you will find angry reviews left by tourists on pretty much every ah branch in Amsterdam on Google Maps.
The second-largest chain, Jumbo, will happily accept my AMEX credit card. In many cases, the groceries are even (slightly) cheaper there. That's why it has been my preferred place to do the groceries for years. But I find my self goes to ah much more often than Jumbo recently, simply because I moved and there is one right across the street.
There are a small handful ah branches (see below) in tourist spots that does accept credit cards. In all other places, you should see posters apparently made by the staff that puts red crosses on Visa, MasterCard and AMEX logos near the entrance and/or the checkout kassa.
From https://www.ah.nl/klantenservice/onze-winkels/zelfscannen-en... (in Dutch):
> In sommige winkels kan je met je creditcard of buitenlandse pre-paid debetkaart betalen: de winkels op Schiphol, veel stationswinkels, de winkel achter het paleis op de Dam in Amsterdam en de winkel aan de Weteringschans in Amsterdam. Bij alle andere winkels kan dit niet.
It wasn't a branch that accepted credit cards (it was full of crossed off card logos), the clerk saw my foreign card with Mastercard logo and said that wouldn't work but I insisted by showing it had a Maestro logo on the back. Reluctantly they said OK, go ahead and for everyone's surprise, it worked.
The transaction ended showing up on my credit card statement, and to this day I really don't know what happened. I know that international withdrawals (that should use Maestro network) appear on my checking account. Who knows...
Example in English: https://www.flysas.com/en/help-and-contact/faq/booking/why-d...
And in Danish: https://www.tivoli.dk/da/om/vilkaar-og-betingelser/betalings... (or without the reasoning in English: https://www.tivoligardens.com/en/om/vilkaar-og-betingelser/b... )
https://www.citizensadvice.org.uk/debt-and-money/borrowing-m...
I would be willing to bet the fees Amazon gets are vastly different from the fees a small merchant has to endure.
They obviously tried to squeeze a little bit more and now they’ll leave it to the shareholders to pressure the company to accept whatever Bezos wants.
Merchants put up with high Amex transaction fees because Amex cardholders tend to be affluent and frequent purchasers.
Especially considering that card transaction fees (in the EU and UK) are capped by the Interchange Fee Regulation (IFR) [1]
But I suppose Amazon processes card payments in such huge volumes that they expect to get rates below the cap limits (0.2% for debit cards and 0.3% for credit cards), or Visa are applying excessive additional fees outside of the interchange fee?
All the major banks apart from Barclays and HSBC use Mastercard for credit
I don't think this is the end of it either, it smells like a negotiation threat. Visa have a larger market share overall (80%, including debit cards [1]) but Mastercard leads in credit cards. Amex has always been fairly niche because it's not accepted everywhere.
[1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/1116580/payment-card-sch...
> Visa was the largest card issuer in Ireland and the United Kingdom, with market shares of over 80 percent in both countries. (from 2019)
Reading further it does look like most Visa cards are debit cards and Mastercard has the lead in credit cards.
PS: Comment updated after some research.