[mytailorisrich]

My guess is that Visa caved and that it was the plan.

My rationale for this guess is that everyone in the UK who has a Visa credit card also has, at the very least, a Visa or Mastercard debit card. So this was going to make people change payment method but I doubt was going to make them stop buying from Amazon.

I am exactly in that case and, like many, a Prime subscriber. I would have just changed card on Amazon and my use of my Visa credit card would have dropped 80%.

Let's face it no-one was going to drop Amazon because of this and they knew it. In the UK Amazon sells $26 billion of stuff annually.