The memo says that Apple “policies do not restrict employees from speaking freely about their wages, hours, or working conditionsâ€, even though the company faces seven outstanding investigations by the National Labor Relations Board into unfair labour practices. This is significant because the citizens of Apple (some 80,000 workers) have been rocked by employee rights turmoil over the past year, with the emerging #AppleToo movement criticising the company for workplace discrimination and supressing labour organisation. Its own credit card offering (Amazon Classic and Platinum Mastercard) is one option available to customers opting out of Visa because of the changes, although a spokesperson said Visa was “a service provider to Amazon, not a competitor†and that the decision to ban Visa credit cards was unrelated to the Amazon card.ÂĪmazon may be seeing the balance of power between e-commerce and payment networks begin to tip in its favour with a big opportunity to claim greater economic sovereignty on the horizon.Ī staff memo shown to NBC News shows that Apple is telling its employees they can freely discuss working conditions and pay. Kelly also argued in an interview with the FT that Amazon had “chosen to threaten to punish consumers†by limiting their choice of payment options.Īmazon might in fact be poised to do much more than threaten. Visa’s Chief Executive, Al Kelly, called Amazon’s decision both “odd†and “unfortunate†but he was hopeful the dispute could be resolved without losing Amazon’s customers. This could carve out an area of economic activity that Amazon fully controlled, leaving Visa to fall by the wayside. This could start with downward pressure on transaction fees, and end with in-house payment tokens that let cash flow directly from buyers to merchants at zero cost. As it expands beyond retail, Amazon could have a broader impact on global economics. It’s influencing economics at a large scale.
This might help Amazon in becoming a payment processor that keeps fraud rates lower than its competitors. It’s built a huge retail customer base, and has a lot of data on everyone in it.
State affairs:Amazon said it will decline Visa credit cards next year.