What!? I just heard that Walmart Canada will no longer be accepting Visa payments at their Canadian stores. This is part of their fight against the "unacceptably high" fee that comes with accepting Visa Credit Cards. The changes will start in about a month at Thunder Bay stores (July 18th to be exact), and then the changes will roll in across Canada shortly after.
Walmart says that they spend over $100 million annually in credit card fees. Visa tends to be the most popular credit card in Canada, so I can assume that a large part of that money goes towards Visa payments. I assume that Visa themselves will also be affected negatively by this movement, so maybe they will break and give into Walmart's lower-rate demand. What do you think?
Walmart is notorious for making several changes at once - so when this change comes about, be sure to make sure that your known price-match and coupon policies don't drastically get altered as well.
Other Canadian retailers like No Frills and Costco have already stopped the use of Visa within their stores - but I never thought that this would come about at Walmart as well. I think this will be huge for us online shoppers. Walmart.ca does not offer the option to pay with PayPal, Cash or Debit. So eliminating the option of using Visa really does narrow down our payment options. Especially considering I make all my online Walmart purchases using my Visa-Debit card.
Will you still shop at your local Walmart?
