Maestro is on the way out, so it probably won’t be much of an issue soon!
It will still take some years until you can pay with MC/Visa everywhere here in Belgium. And until then, I have to use Maestro too. Good news though.
Until Belgians start boycotting those places where Visa/Mastercard are not accepted, nothing will change. They are not accepted because the storekeepers are cheapskates and don’t want to pay the fees. Those jerks are happy to take your money, but not so happy to accept the inherent costs of doing business. You must force them to change, by taking your business elsewhere.
Any store that doesn’t accept normal credit/debit cards in 2022 doesn’t deserve to be in business.
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This will always be a discussion if you also look at it from the merchant’s perspective. I’ve done online business in the past, and when margins are slim, paying about 3-4% to MasterCard / Visa is just killing. It’s a lot!!!
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It would be funny if Belgium switched to Visa electron cards now after maestro will be defunct. 
Just to be different from rest of the world, you know 
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Nah. If they didn’t kill the tens of thousands of merchants who accept proper cards in the rest of Europe, they won’t kill them in Belgium.
It was the same in Germany ten years ago. Almost nobody took proper credit/debit cards, they were all whining about how the fees would kill them, blah blah blah… And yet they’re still alive and happy to accept them now.
Next time you’re in a store that doesn’t take your Visa or Mastercard, you should clearly express your disappointment, then leave the place without buying anything. Nothing will change until people start doing this.
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I think you have a skewed idea how much card processing fees are. I’m admittedly not in Belgium, for my own business I pay for accepting UK and EEA issued Mastercard and Visa 0.8% and for non-European cards 2.42%. For some reason only Amex thinks they are worth 3.95%, therefore I refuse to accept their cards. I’m a small sole trader, supermarket chains can get better rates (especially if you get different rates for debit and credit cards).
Handling cash is certainly not cheaper if you have a business account.
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In reality merchants pass processing fees to their customers (include in to product prices), so not sure what the big fuss is about.
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Exactly!
Add 3-4% to your listed selling price.
Problem solved!
How else do you expect people to actually buys goods. Maestro is going to be dead in May. Anybody who has a Maestro card will find it replaced with a non-Maestro card at next expiry. If the card gets lost or stolen, it will also be replaced with a non-Maestro card.
Very quickly, you are into a situation where very few people still have Maestro cards.
To operate a Maestro-only business in that scenario would be madness.
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I was hoping to see a Visa debit card with Revolut and supporting V-pay too, but since Maestro is retiring that’s no longer needed.
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That’s right - practically speaking, with Maestro being phased out now, V Pay is also being dumped without Visa even needing to announce it!
Once you can’t rely on the Maestro and V Pay duopoly, you have no choice as a merchant but to support proper Visa and Mastercard cards of all types.
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The irony is that a Visa country manager said in an interview long before Mastercard that Visa is going to retire Vpay soon, and that they’re in talk with issuing partners about this change. The guy no longer works for Visa, and it seems like this doesn’t have priority for them, but they did talk about it publicly even before Mastercard.
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If Visa delays the retirement of V-Pay much longer (lets say 2+ years) then banks in the ‘common’ Maestro countries (NL for example) might switch to V-pay initially as temporary solution before switching fully to Mastercard of Visa debit.
Rabobank (NL) was one of the first banks announcing their switch to Visa Debit which was supposed to happen in second half of this year, but so far no updates on that probably due to merchant issues as they need to all upgrade their POS terminals to accept Visa debit.
If this get more delayed chances are that the smaller banks switch to V-Pay.
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That’s is sad because I would love a revolut maestro card.
I just (finally) got my account here in Brazil, still a lot needed to be improved, but the visa debit here only works was credit.
Debit cards in Brazil are only maestro or Visa Electron and some places only take debit, nowadays it’s even worse because some small places are giving up on accepting cards and switching to PIX only, Brazilian instant payments system because is instantly and free.
Free for personal (person to person, or person to business) use, business accounts could be charged by using it but most banks and PoS terminal provides usually offers it for free because the high competition on the market, isn’t uncommon for stores here to have 2 or even 3 mobile PoS from distinct providers since some may offer better fee on credit, debit or on specific card brands, like Amex, Elo, discover).
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The situation in Brazil is confusing.
Mastercard bought Redeshop in 2002 and rebranded it Maestro. Its own Maestro was renamed to Mastercard Débito, implying that this is a Debit Mastercard. But in reality, it’s the kind of Maestro we’re talking about here. So what you probably would want is the Brazilian specific version of Maestro that used to be Redeshop.
I have no idea how the transition in Europe is going to affect the Brazilian market. But I can imagine that Mastercard will still use the Maestro brand in Brazil for a while for the local network.
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Is not that confusing, back in the 90’s RedeShop was huge in Brazil, so when MasterCard bought it they become the most common card brand in Brazil.
RedeShop debit/ATM cards become MasterCard Maestro and RedeShop credit card becomes MasterCard.
On late 2000’s MasterCard started to rebrand their maestro was MasterCard débito, but the functionality on the card still maestro even today
Here I’m being forced to use a debit/maestro card to buy something on a vending machine at the hospital.
Most cards in Brazil are dual-mode, both credit and debit functions are present, depending of the terminal it may show MasterCard/Maestro (on older cards or Apple Pay) or Credit/debit (physical cards) depending of what the card issuer decides to name it.
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See, it is confusing 
What Mastercard calls Maestro in Brazil, is, from a technical perspective, Redeshop.
What Mastercard calls Mastercard débito is, from a technical perspective, not identical to what everyone else in the world calls Mastercard Debit.
The débito card is processed on the Redeshop/Maestro network. The Debit cards are processed on the same network as credit cards. That is the technical reason why you need to select “credit” to use them.
This thread about Mastercard retiring Maestro is about the Maestro brand in Europe. Your local Redeshop network that Mastercard also calls Maestro is—and this is my guess—not affected by this.
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Let’s see what happens, would be nice our maestro becoming MasterCard debit because would allow it being used on-line and on apps.
Our maestro on-line capacity is very limited, basically the site/app needs to have a direct deal with the card issuer.
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RedeShop cards died 20 years ago, the only remaining “Rede” thing is “RedeCard” nowadays called only “Rede” that are the PoS (credit card machines) from bank itaú.
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I’m sorry but I consider this to be part of their doing business. Anyways: it’s been forbidden to transfer these fee on to the customer for a good while now, and still many do that illegally!
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