Best Buy Kicks Visa Contactless Out Of The Building
Written by Evan SchumanJanuary 6th, 2010
Within a few months of Best Buy threatening Visa that it will halt accepting its contactless card unless Visa changed its fees, the $35 billion 1,023-store chain made good on its threats and became Visa contactless-less.
The controversy involves Visa forcing chains to accept more expensive signature—as opposed to the more retail-friendly PIN—authorization. Best Buy is still accepting Visa magstripe cards plus other brands' contactless offerings. "After several discussions with Visa produced no agreeable changes," the chain started removing its acceptance of Visa contactless cards in October, completing the cutoff in November, said one Best Buy executive involved in the decision. The cutoff happened store by store along with POS upgrades. "Our decision was based on the costs associated with requiring contactless debit transactions be processed as signature debit."
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5 Comments | Read Best Buy Kicks Visa Contactless Out Of The Building
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January 6th, 2010 at 6:30 pm
Meh. None of my credit cards have pins. I always sign.
January 7th, 2010 at 3:11 pm
With market trends these days, everyone is moving towards contactless payment processing. However, key thing here to note is the proliferation of cellular phones and smart phones.
It won’t be long until we are all paying via our mobile payments account, and no longer carrying plastic. Just wave your phone in front of the reader, and it will be paid. Exciting things are in the works.
January 7th, 2010 at 6:25 pm
This article is very interesting. Of course, it brings up more questions than answers. Is Best Buy starting a trend? Will this impact Visa’s approach? What is Best Buy losing by turning off PayWave cards? What is Visa losing by not having contactless acceptance at Best Buy?Most importantly, I wonder what the long term effect will be. Will this move the needle either way?
January 8th, 2010 at 1:33 pm
Since these cards can be swiped, I think Visa has much more to lose in this battle than Best Buy.
June 3rd, 2011 at 2:35 pm
Amazing. You’d think Visa would have just dropped the fees for Bestbuy…or, rather, have given them some sort of marketing dollars to compensate. Also, why didnt BB reprogram the POS to prompt for PIN if contactless BIN range indicated it was a debit card?