Interchange fees

[NoMoreE46]

Some may wonder why AMEX is not as widely accepted compared to Visa, MasterCard and Discover.  Well as a merchant, AMEX costs more from a swipe fee perspective.

Below is a link from creditdonkey.com that

goes into more details.

https://www.creditdonkey.com/interchange-rates.html

[simplynoir]

I thought Visa had taken the crown as the processor with the higher fees because of how banks were issuing Visa Signature/Infinite cards like candy which allowed them to take a bigger piece from each transaction

[OmarGB9]

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@simplynoir wrote:

I thought Visa had taken the crown as the processor with the higher fees because of how banks were issuing Visa Signature/Infinite cards like candy which allowed them to take a bigger piece from each transaction

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That's what I thought too. I thought Amex was no longer the most "expensive" merchant to accept.

[simplynoir]

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@OmarGB9 wrote:

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@simplynoir wrote:

I thought Visa had taken the crown as the processor with the higher fees because of how banks were issuing Visa Signature/Infinite cards like candy which allowed them to take a bigger piece from each transaction

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That's what I thought too. I thought Amex was no longer the most "expensive" merchant to accept.

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I mean Amazon UK was threatening to not allow Visa purchases on their website late last year because of the higher fees and only reached an agreement to continue at the last moment I wanna say in January/February

[NoMoreE46]

I dunno.  Cursory glance does shows up to 3.0% for AMEX, 2.3 for VS and 2.2 for MC...

The article did note the the fees are typically updated twice a year- April & Oct. These rates are from April.

[Anonymous]

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@simplynoir wrote:

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I mean Amazon UK was threatening to not allow Visa purchases on their website late last year because of the higher fees and only reached an agreement to continue at the last moment I wanna say in January/February

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Right, but that rates in the UK are rather different (hence lack of credit card rewards):

When Britain was in the European Union, Visa and other card networks had to abide by a cap of 30 basis points per transaction done with a credit card. In the U.K. that ceiling, post-Brexit, moved to 1.15%. Debit card caps remain 20 basis points, so for merchants and for Amazon, debit remains attractive.

So the max moved from 0.3% to 1.15% and I guess the claim was that Visa was moving towards the max.   Both sides playing big stakes games (Amazon UK is about 7% of Amazon total sales) so good they came to an agreement.  (Some analysts thought that if it went well/OK in the UK, Amazon would stop taking Visa credit in the US too)

[NoMoreE46]

Thanks for adding this important distinction and clarification @Anonymous.   

I provided U.S. numbers and apparently the fees are set/regulated per country.