It is true that my experience in DK is prior to PSD2.
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Here on Curacao gasstations do not accept any creditcards.
I ordered a maestro to test if i could use my revolut account this way.
Haven’t tested it yet though.
None of the Revolut cards is credit. They are all handled as prepaid cards.
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I’ve never seen a merchant differentiating between the different types of “credit cards” but only on brands. It might be that the technically correct term would be, gas stations don’t accept the brands of Mastercard/Visa/Diners/Amex/… because the don’t want to accept “credit cards”. They are not interested in the real “inner working” of the deal the customer has with their issuer.
On the other hand, they might take traditional debit cards like Maestro.
Reason for that: Some countries, like Switzerland, have different fee structures for different brands. Mastercards being more expensive than Maestro.
Ironically, you see that sometimes in the US when small merchants accept debit, but not credit cards. In the US, the same brands Visa and MC are used for a longer time in parallel for debit/credit, and bank cards have written “Credit” or “Debit” on them for longer than here in Europe.
The general statement is true for US and Europe, that some Merchants don’t accept credit cards. Historically, in Europe a Mastercard/Visa was always a credit card whereas in the US the system of having a Mastercard Debit is established since a long time. Europe only starts with this now.
Yes, that’s what I was referring to.
My point was that you can find indeed merchants making differences between credit/debit, independently from the brand that made this distinction implicit. Just not in Europe. Yet.
I know, but gasstations will not even try if they see a visa logo.
Problem with maestro could be the V-pay. Local swipe machines don’t accept V-pay. At my work a V-pay maestro card from dutch Rabo bank from a customer was declined with a ‘invalid transaction’ code as well.
Maestro is a brand used by MasterCard for debit cards
V-Pay is a brand used by Visa for debit cards.
As I understand your statement, your refer to a card combining these two brand’s on one card, V-Pay and Maestro? I have my doubt that this exists.
In the UK we use visa and Mastercard for debit and credit 
no V-Pay or Maestro here, although we accept maestro due to the fact the UK used to use it.
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Yeah but only recently. Former switch cards were co-badged with Maestro. Traditionally there was the same distinction between brands for debit / credit.
I just had the experience that the card was from rabo bank, had a maestro logo and gave an ‘invalid transaction’ code.
Guest in question contacted her bank who told her it was because the swipe machine didn’t accept V-Pay.
Same machine does accept MC and Visa though. It also accepta my revolut visa, but doesn’t accept my revolut maestro, which i found out yesterday. Same code ‘invalid transaction’.
Everybody keeps on thinking about US and Europe when discussing various card types. However it’s quite easy to have one type of card because most likely it will be accepted.
But they forget about Asia and Africa where the financial markets are booming nevertheless they might not always ready to provide same services. Some countries only accept Visa, some others only Mastercard…
What is the purpose of Revolut not letting us chose the card types that we wish to use depending on the countries we are travelling to? Instead of issuing cards based on residency?
If someone travels a lot then having various cards are crucial. Let us choose what type of physical cards we would need.
Thank you Revolut for considering this option.
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Incorrect, Maestro is not MasterCard. In many places in NL the Verifone payment terminal only supports Maestro, not Mastercard or Mastercard Debitcard.
Same for some places is Belgium and Germany.
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Yes, Maestro is a debit brand/service owned by Mastercard indeed, at the end name conventions are blending making that very confusing, as this is a very location/country dependent thing.
To understand that, the key point it’s the merchant fees, in Germany and Netherlands, Maestro and VPay debit offer reduced fees compared with Mastercard / Visa counterparts, it seems, in those regions, they are not able to differentiate between Debit from Credit types for the flagship badged (Mastercard / Visa) cards.
In Germany, Maestro/VPay are competitors of the local debit network Girocard (informally known as EC card), although a Girocard plastic is also co-branded as Maestro due to a strategy for increasing their international acceptance, which makes the whole understanding a mess.
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