Visa Ends Ban on Retailer Discounts for Specific Cards

Visa (NYSE:V) is giving its merchants more flexibility in offering discounts to their customers.

Until recently, the card network generally prohibited its retail partners from offering special deals to customers that paid with a specific bank's credit or debit card. But Visa quietly lifted the ban on Feb. 1, paving the way for retailers to cut deals with card issuers, according to Visa group president of the Americas William Sheedy.

"There has not been the flexibility in the past for a merchant to say to a particular issuer's customers, 'Use your card here and we will give you 5% off,'" for example, Sheedy said in a recent interview.

The rule change, implemented by new Chief Executive Charles Scharf, applies to all Visa products, including credit, debit and prepaid cards.

Though the change is small, it signals a potentially significant shift at Visa, where Scharf took over in November. He has frequently called increased flexibility a key priority at the network, which has long faced merchant complaints, litigation and even government actions about the prices and rules it imposes on retailers that accept its cards.

Earlier this month, Scharf told stock analysts: "If you go around and talk to issuers, acquirers, merchants, we can be a little too rules-oriented. And so we've got to figure out how we become less focused on rules, while preserving what's important to keep the integrity of our network in place."

It is too early to assess the impact of Visa's new rules on its bank customers, or on the merchants that accept its cards. Numerous banks, including Wells Fargo (WFC) and JPMorgan Chase (JPM), declined to comment on the rule change, and so did the National Retail Federation.

But payments experts say that Visa's more flexible rules could have several potential benefits for both banks and merchants. First, for retailers that offer store-branded, general-purpose credit cards, the new rule will allow them to entice customers with discounts at the cash register.

"There's obviously a marketing appeal to doing that," says Glen Trudel, a partner at the law firm Ballard Spahr.

It's also conceivable that retailers will offer discounts on non-store branded credit cards issued by specific banks, but it's less clear if the economics of such arrangements make sense.

Until now, retailers that accept Visa cards were able to offer their customers rewards points or other incentives when they made purchases on store-branded credit cards, but they were not allowed to offer card-specific discounts at the point of sale, unless the customer brought along a coupon from the card issuer.

"As opposed to using a coupon … this is cleaner," Trudel says.

Visa also appears to be anticipating the proliferation of mobile wallets. Eliminating the requirement that the shopper present a coupon in order to qualify for a targeted discount could smooth the transition to mobile payments.

"We're entering into a world where the point of sale is going to become more sophisticated," says Visa's Sheedy.

The rule change could also potentially effect competition in the debit card market.

Because banks with more than $10 billion of assets are now subject to price caps on the debit swipe fees they charge retailers, merchants have an incentive to steer their customers toward using larger banks' debit cards, rather than debit cards from small banks. But Visa's rules long forbade them from doing so.