Amazon will start phasing out some credit cards as an alternative to Visa after concerns around delays on payments.
Last week the British government asked Amazon to set up a separate payment system for its British customers. This would be different from the current currency-linked Amazon systems to avoid delays that are normal with this type of multi-country payment.
So, this means that Amazon, whether it likes it or not, will start accepting Visa card payments instead.
Any kind of card will be accepted, but it will be exclusively in British money.
In the past, Amazon has always accepted all the major currencies, and a PayPal card would have been an alternative. However, rather than using this alternative, now it will only accept a Visa credit card issued in Britain.
Amazon customers won’t lose any value, since the change is actually a one-off one-off payment. However, it is better for Amazon to handle this because any kind of payment delay on Amazon could create problems for the UK Government, where the general election is due to take place in just two months’ time.
This is particularly due to the general complaint that one of the main reasons for slow responses to taxpayers’ money from major financial institutions is due to a lack of adequate payment facilities, which include more independent payment systems for larger national accounts.
Amazon has around four million credit card payment accounts in the UK, which has a high volume of exchange of payments and other payments. Customers who wanted to remain with Amazon could potentially choose a PayPal card, which is not the case because that bank, PayPal, has also been approached by the British government to look at establishing a payment solution for the public.
The main options for making Visa card payments on Amazon will be:
PayBill
eBay Payments – Amazon money
PayScheme
Currently, Amazon’s payment systems are too rigid, which could cause payment delays if they weren’t quickly implemented into its systems.
There are also financial institutions that pay regularly to make payments on behalf of customers on Amazon. And with Apple’s recent announcement that it will allow for Visa card payments, this could potentially push a lot of large and large volumes of payments.