It isn't worth the risk to switch to Amazon. The payments industry right now is cutthroat, with First Data offering clients rates like 1.5 cents per transaction and no basis points over interchange. This is insane compared to what the merchant industry was charging just a few years ago, to the point that many of First Data's own ISOs are being severely undercut on price by the company that provides their own backend.
Why would you choose to be at Amazon's behest, when you can pay less and know you won't need to lift a finger for multiple years wrt credit & debit processing.
They've been offering it to most of the clients I used to work with in the grocery industry, Mercury is matching it too. Might not be available to every SIC, but perhaps its a good excuse to buy into a small grocer that does $150k/month in processing and run all your volume through that.
Grocers pay among the lowest rates for credit card processing, I think that was a big part of Amazon's very loud attempts at grocery. They don't care whether it succeeds if it knocks a few dozen basis points off their interchange rates!
Sorry but it utterly defies belief that Amazon were able to reduce their MDR by loudly pretending to be a grocer.
The banker scans the document with a frown. He strokes his chin thoughtfully.
"Amazon.. Amazon. Where have I heard that.. Oh yeah, the grocer! Zero basis points!"
Back on topic, different SICs[1] get different interchange rates from Visa, Mastercard and the like. Multiple companies have sued to lower certain SICs interchange rates[2]. Amazon's SIC has changed over time, and it could easily be argued that they fit into multiple SICs.
Its up to the sales org that handles them to appropriately code their SIC, Amazon could easily have switched to processing with a new platform for Amazon Fresh, and slowly moved most of their volume over without negative repercussions from Visa/Mastercard.
Why would you choose to be at Amazon's behest, when you can pay less and know you won't need to lift a finger for multiple years wrt credit & debit processing.