Plea to retailers: Please accept American Express

DCFC79

I cant see how the thread will help but anyway back on topic, either learn to live with or get rid of the card then job done.

Astuteboy

dark^knight wrote: »

Amex is the only credit card I have, and I pay it off in full every month, and I do get cashback on all purchases.

You need to get another card really for when you can't use Amex

For the record I work for an e-commerce firm (several million turnover); we don't take American Express.

hermante

Aquatronixjenny wrote: »

If amex want to get more merchants on board then they have to lower their charges... simple.

Or not. They seem to be doing fine.

brettcta

i used to work for sky and they never accept amex either, so i'm not sure that big companies do manage to negotiate that much of a rate drop

OllyM

There is a worrying amount of misinformation in this thread. American Express have recently reduced the merchant fee charged to retailers quite significantly.

We pay ~1.5% to accept Visa and MasterCard credit cards, and 2.1% to accept World MasterCards (to fund the cashback). American Express now charge us... 1.5%. It actually costs less for us to take an American Express card than a MasterCard!

MaggieBaking

Our Amex cards give us 1.5% cashback on supermarkets and fuel, which is where most of our money goes.

It's 0.75% cashback for everything else - which is till better than Tesco's credit card which gives an equivalent to 0.25% cashback on purchases (although this can mean 0.75-1% in Clubcard Reward points)

Wherever possible we use the Amex - and then Mastercard if they don't take amex. I don't have any problem with retailers refusing to use it... If it's more expensive to them and their profit margins are small, so be it - we're happy.

paddyrg

OllyM wrote: »

There is a worrying amount of misinformation in this thread. American Express have recently reduced the merchant fee charged to retailers quite significantly.

We pay ~1.5% to accept Visa and MasterCard credit cards, and 2.1% to accept World MasterCards (to fund the cashback). American Express now charge us... 1.5%. It actually costs less for us to take an American Express card than a MasterCard!

Very interesting, and thanks for the update. I was working with apparently outdated info - but you do say it was a recent change, so you can understand why

vikingaero

OllyM wrote: »

There is a worrying amount of misinformation in this thread. American Express have recently reduced the merchant fee charged to retailers quite significantly.

We pay ~1.5% to accept Visa and MasterCard credit cards, and 2.1% to accept World MasterCards (to fund the cashback). American Express now charge us... 1.5%. It actually costs less for us to take an American Express card than a MasterCard!

It really depends on the size of your business in terms of outlets and average spend. A Mercedes car dealership chain charging £300+ for an average service is going to pay low fees if their customer base regularly uses Amex. A small shop with one Amex customer per day spending £10 is going to be whacked.

Historically Amex has had an appalling reputation for paying merchants and delaying payments to merchants - think 30 days minimum and 90 days as the norm. Whilst they have improved on this it is still a minimum of 5 working days for normal retailers (larger retailers may have better terms) and you can extend the period before payment for a lower % fee. It may be that for the 1.5% your company is happy to wait 2-3 weeks for payment. Some small retailers I know are charged just over 2% for a 7 day wait for payment. For some retailers cashflow is king and they may not be able to survive without that money when you consider that most Visa/Mastercard transactions are reconciled in 2-3 working days maximum.

OllyM

vikingaero wrote: »

It really depends on the size of your business in terms of outlets and average spend. A Mercedes car dealership chain charging £300+ for an average service is going to pay low fees if their customer base regularly uses Amex. A small shop with one Amex customer per day spending £10 is going to be whacked.

We don't accept many Amex payments so the fee reduction is certainly not because of a high volume of Amex transactions.

Historically Amex has had an appalling reputation for paying merchants and delaying payments to merchants - think 30 days minimum and 90 days as the norm. Whilst they have improved on this it is still a minimum of 5 working days for normal retailers (larger retailers may have better terms) and you can extend the period before payment for a lower % fee. It may be that for the 1.5% your company is happy to wait 2-3 weeks for payment. Some small retailers I know are charged just over 2% for a 7 day wait for payment. For some retailers cashflow is king and they may not be able to survive without that money when you consider that most Visa/Mastercard transactions are reconciled in 2-3 working days maximum.

That must be very historical - I believe they settle in 3 days now.

dizziblonde

Would totally thwart my step father's moneysaving scheme using Amex... go out somewhere, "Oh heck darling they don't take my card, can you pay this time and I'll pay next" - next time never occurs!

We long since wised up to this scheme and started keeping a running total and demanding repayment at the end of the month but it worked for him for a while!