The Destruction of Visa and Mastercard Has Begun

WashEx: Amazon to ban Visa credit cards in United Kingdom

Amazon announced Wednesday it will no longer accept Visa credit cards issued in the United Kingdom starting January, citing high transaction fees charged by the company .

The news comes after the U.K.'s departure from the European Union, which got rid of mandated caps on credit card transaction fees. Amazon said consumers are still allowed to use Visa debit cards, Eurocards, Mastercards , and American Express cards.

...“The cost of accepting card payments continues to be an obstacle for businesses striving to provide the best prices for customers. These costs should be going down over time with technological advancements, but instead they continue to stay high or even rise," an Amazon spokesperson told MarketWatch . "As a result of Visa's continued high cost of payments, we regret that Amazon.co.uk will no longer accept UK-issued Visa credit cards as of 19 January, 2022."

Blockchain replaces network fees that are percentages of transactions with fees the run into the ones of pennies. Amazon is being aggressive now because it can. This is the start of a major trend.

Chartwise, Visa is approaching the bottom of its channel. Mastercard has further to go. If support is lost, it may be time to aggressively short. After the credit card companies, the big target for blockchain will be Microsoft, Oracle, Amazon, Google and their cloud services.

I'm not really sure why they qualify, but Mastercard and Visa are top-10 components of the S&P 500 Technology sector. They combine for 5.8 percent of assets. The story here is the narrowing of the bull market. Short opportunitues grow, even as the headline indexes make new highs.