Why the EU is planning to take away your Visa and Mastercard reward cards

Links on Head for Points may pay us an affiliate commission. A list of partners is here.

This is a guest post, written by Andrew Seftel (although the sensationalist headline is mine!) to whom I am grateful. You may recognise his name from the comments pages of Head for Points. His background makes him the ideal person to explain why the potentially dull subject of credit card interchange fees will lead to big changes in how you earn your miles over the next few years. Over to Andrew ….

There’s a change coming through the credit card industry that will make it harder to earn miles using cards: card issuers will get less revenue from each purchase you make. This is what funds the rewards you earn, which means that it’ll be harder to earn using cards.

Despite the size of this change, there has been very little discussion about it in the usual places (although some of HfP’s more City-minded readers might have spotted an article on this very topic on the front page of the FT two weeks ago). Here’s a quick briefing on what’s happening.

UK Rewards credit and charge cards

A primer on interchange

Every time you make a purchase on a debit or credit card, the merchant is charged a cut of the transaction. Some of this will be a charge from the merchant’s bank, the rest will be an ‘interchange’ fee of about 0.7-1.2%, set by Visa or MasterCard that is mostly paid to the card issuer.

This payment helps to cover the costs of issuing a card (e.g. physical cards, statements, fraud) and is the reason why credit card companies are happy to have you even if you don’t pay any interest or fees.

Crucially for HFP readers, card issuers realised that they could give some of this cut back to consumers, for example, as cashback or points. This has led to the situation that we currently enjoy: being able to earn large amounts of cash, miles and points by using the right credit cards.

What’s changing?

For almost as long as this arrangement has been in place, merchants have hated it! They see it as an unnecessary tax on their revenues, dictated to them by an oligopoly of card networks. Various entities have spent the past couple decades in courtrooms and regulatory commissions battling Visa and MasterCard (although not American Express) and their fees.

This slow and complicated tango of proposals and appeals looks finally to be drawing to a conclusion. In the UK, it looks like card interchange will be capped at 0.3%. Regulators will be hoping that the savings from these reduced fees will be passed onto consumers.

What does this mean for me?

Card issuers have been anticipating these changes for a while. As a result, new reward card products have become less lucrative over the past few years. Expect that Visa / MasterCard offerings will continue to become less numerous and less generous.
Existing cards should be unaffected for the time being, but at some point the issuer will start losing money on every purchase and consider devaluing on-going earnings. Think carefully about closing good card accounts (e.g. BMI cards). You probably won’t be able to get an equivalent replacement.
The HfP demographic (who I presume generally pays off their cards in full every month) will become much less profitable for card issuers. In addition to lower rewards rates, sign-up bonuses will probably become less generous and we may also see annual fees becoming more commonplace. Alternatively, more strings may be attached, such as having a particular current account to be eligible for a card.
Commercial cards look safe for the time being. Cards targeted at small businesses may be a bright spot for the self-employed.

But I mostly spend on Amex anyway

If you’ve given rewards cards even the most cursory glance, you’ll have seen that cards on the American Express network offer the best rewards. This is because merchants pay a higher fee to accept the card, giving them more margin to share with the cardholder.

You might therefore think that this isn’t such a big deal, but you’re not completely safe:

Not everywhere takes Amex, so you’ll be getting less back at those places
Only a few companies issue Amex cards, so having other issuers with good offers gives you more introductory bonuses to exploit
From a merchant’s point of view, these changes will make Amex even more expensive to accept (relative to Mastercard and Visa), so Amex acceptance might get worse
Amex might unilaterally reduce fees to bolster acceptance or avert regulatory action, leading to less rich reward programmes
Amex cards issued by other companies (e.g. MBNA, Lloyds) are affected by the cap, so they will probably have their rewards cut at some point. This will likely affect the competitiveness of rewards offers in the long-term.

Enjoy it while it lasts

The idea of a ‘game changing’ shift in the loyalty rewards landscape is one that is bandied about all too often. This one is indeed bigger than a closing loophole or a program devaluation. It’s not all bad news though: American Express and commercial cards probably aren’t going to be directly affected.

Taking the big-picture view, cutting interchange may be a generally good thing if these savings are passed onto consumers, rather than being retained by merchants or their banks (although HfP readers will probably still be worse off). Nevertheless, as long as there remain sweet spots and loopholes somewhere, there will still be lucrative opportunities to travel the world and stay in incredible places.

Andrew Seftel works as an analyst within the credit card industry. You can contact him on Twitter @andrewseftel

Want to earn more points from credit cards? – December 2021 update

If you are looking to apply for a new credit or charge card, here are our November 2021 recommendations based on the current sign-up bonus.

You can see our full directory of all UK cards which earn airline or hotel points here. Here are the top current deals:

British Airways BA Amex American Express card

British Airways American Express

5,000 Avios for signing up, no annual fee and an Economy 2-4-1 voucher for spending ….. Read our full review

British Airways BA Premium Plus American Express Amex credit card

British Airways American Express Premium Plus

25,000 Avios and the UK’s most valuable credit card perk – the 2-4-1 companion voucher Read our full review

American Express Preferred Rewards Gold

Your best beginner’s card – 20,000 points, FREE for a year & two airport lounge passes Read our full review

The Platinum Card from American Express

30,000 points and an unbeatable set of travel benefits – for a fee Read our full review

Earning miles and points from small business cards

If you are a sole trader or run a small company, you may also want to check out these offers.

American Express Business Gold

20,000 points sign-up bonus and free for a year Read our full review

American Express Business Platinum

40,000 points sign-up bonus and a long list of travel benefits Read our full review

British Airways Accelerating Business American Express

30,000 Avios sign-up bonus – plus annual bonuses of up to 30,000 Avios Read our full review

Capital On Tap Business Rewards Visa

The most generous Avios Visa or Mastercard for a limited company Read our full review

For a non-American Express option, we also recommend the Barclaycard Select Cashback card for sole traders and small businesses. It is FREE and you receive 1% cashback on your spending:

Barclaycard Select Cashback Credit Card

1% cashback and no annual fee Read our full review

Category

General

This article is closed to new posts. Discussion continues in the HfP Forums.

Sven says:

27 Jul27 July 11:21

Did the author actually look at the files he linked for the interchange fee rate? The claim that it’s 0.7-1.2% is clearly wrong if you take the time to open the file. It’s 0.5% to 1.9% for credit cards.

Visa Debit Cards starts as low as 0.15% + € 0.0015 for consumer credit cards and does not exceed 0.9% + € 0.0025 depending on what method of payment authorization is used.

Visa Credit cards areas low as 0.5% for most transactions (CHIP&PIN) but can go up to 0.75% for Airlines.

MasterCard is where the main challenge is because they not only have fees going up to 1.9%, they also charge higher fees for their premium level cards (like MasterCard World or World Signia) based on the assumption that having such a card leads to higher spending and hence retailers like those customers.

A typical CHIP&PIN transactions on a prepaid MasterCard is 0.55%, on a standard card it’s 0.8% on world 1.3$ and a Signia 1.5%.

So the big looser if a cap comes in is MasterCard network in which issuing banks would loose massive amounts of revenue, Visa would only loose 0.1% on a typical transaction.

For Visa, yes there will be some consequences for the consumer and his miles or APR (because if visa issuing banks loose 0.1% they most likely are going to either put the APR up or increase the yearly fee). But for 0.1% it is unlikely that we see big changes to the miles that can be accrued because most likely the banks are going to the seller of the miles and renegotiate the terms there.

For premium MasterCard there will be a major change and that is where we are most likely going to see major changes to the benefits, however let’s be realistic, one is not having a Coutts card for miles (which I don’t get), one has it because of the generous spending limit with 0% APR for a low fee of £350 a year. Will it hurt if that fee goes up to let’s say £500 to make up for lost revenue on the interchange fee, no.

Now the question is where does these interchange fee rate are billed to the consumer?

Airlines which have the highest interchange fee are already charging extra for the privilege of using a card and they are not going to lower their fee just because of a 0.1% lower fee.

The fee that the merchant provider is paid for by the merchant settings the prices for his good accordingly (unless they are in the lucky position to charge extra for using credit cards) based on what they pay for their credit card processing provider. So unless a reduced interchange fee will lead to lower credit card processing cost (which it won’t) there will be no change to the end price for the consumer.

Having the government set the rate that a merchant is paying to an issuing bank is wrong because it interferes with consumer and merchant choices. Nobody forces a retailer to accept MasterCard or Visa. They accept credit cards because of the fact that a person paying with credit card usually spends more than a person paying cash and they like people having premium cards even better because typically those spend even more. The 1.9% for the Coutts card is calculated in the mix they pay to their merchant provider just like the 0.15% for the Visa Debit Card.

Nobody is forcing a bank to offer a MasterCard (which you can see from the fact that the majority of banks are offering the lower cost Visa Cards) but some bank decided they want to use those because World or World Signia is better than Visa platinum of Visa Signature or Visa Infinite.

In the end this is down to choice and market forces setting the price for a service. Banks can always go elsewhere (i.e. Amex/Diners, create their own merchant network) or choose a different card brand (i.e. Visa).

The impact on the standard consumer is going to be low, the impact on premium credit cards will be marginal higher.
Andrew (@andrewseftel) says:

27 Jul27 July 12:16

Thanks for the positive comments. I’ll be going through them with follow-ups when I get a chance.

One thing to note is that this article was written before the EU released their draft proposal this week. There’s a good FAQ here: http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_MEMO-13-719_en.htm
Farringdon says:

27 Jul27 July 13:39

Great post! Can you comment on the recent experience on the US with reforms on interchange fees and whether there is any read across to the UK.
- Andrew (@andrewseftel) says:
  
  28 Jul28 July 10:32
  
  I’m not too familiar with what’s going on in the US, but I believe that recent changes were focused on debit cards. As far as I know, US issuers still get something like 1-3% per credit card transaction, much more than in the UK (which is why their cards are so much more generous).
Steve says:

27 Jul27 July 14:54

Right, there’s only one thing for it then – lets cane those 3V cards while we still can !!
- jonny says:
  
  27 Jul27 July 15:08
  
  I’m with you!
Me says:

27 Jul27 July 21:26

Andrew – I’ve briefly read a few parts of that linked FAQ…and I’m rather more confused now…

EU FAQ says
“around 60% of the EU population does not possess a credit card”
Which leads me to wonder, what the issue is – as mentioned by Sven, there doesn’t appear to be a monopoly position here – merchants can choose which cards to accept.

The other thing, I don’t get is why does there need to be a common policy across all European states? It’s clear from the documents that different states have cultural attitudes, economic situations and banks which have different retail – finance strategies (e.g. in some states it’s common to charge a current account fee, in others it’s uncommon).
Different currencies across Europe will also mean card providers won’t be taken up by residents from other member states – so what will all this actually achieve?
- callum says:
  
  27 Jul27 July 21:57
  
  Because that’s the whole point of the EU existing – making a common market. Same reason why mobile roaming charges are capped and are falling every year (in the near future I can see them being abolished full stop within the EU).
  
  Common policies don’t stop the different cultures you mentioned anyway – some banks in the UK have current account fees, that doesn’t remotely affect the free accounts. There is no reason why they can co-exist within a country but can’t within the EU.
- James says:
  
  28 Jul28 July 10:16
  
  The EU is meant to have only one currency… and apart from the GBP and SEK, none of the others matter, are effectively the euro, or are basket cases anyway.
Volker says:

27 Jul27 July 23:41

Many years ago I had a credit card where I had to pay some interest on EVERY purchase amount – from the transaction date until I made a payment to my card account to clear my “debt”. I didn’t mind as to me that was just the obvious difference between a credit card and a debit card.
Maybe this model will become more popular in the future and we can continue our daily hunt for generous rewards and miles.
- James says:
  
  28 Jul28 July 10:18
  
  Really? So you would actually spend extra money to buy miles with every transaction? A credit card is – up to 56 days interest free, purchase protection and sometimes insurance. This is different from paying a fixed percentage fee to the merchant when you have a spending target to meet or need some miles for a specific purpose.
  - Andrew (@andrewseftel) says:
    
    28 Jul28 July 10:27
    
    I don’t see why you couldn’t pay off new transactions mid-statement. You’d still owe a small amount of interest, but the value of the miles would outweigh it, especially if intro bonuses stick around.
Andrew (@andrewseftel) says:

28 Jul28 July 10:03

Not too late at all. These proposals will still need parliamentary approval.
Clive J says:

28 Jul28 July 20:21

Good article thanks. It goes some way to explaining why the sign-up bonuses for Amex are generally better. It’s difficult to see how Amex could continue with an even greater disparity in these fees. Even if they don’t fall under similar legislation I imagine they would need to voluntarily reduce their fees if the Visa/MC ones are capped.