No its nit a giropay system!
We have pin terminals that onlynsupport Maestro and VPay.
Offering Master and Visa is not everywhere available
This is not possible per mastercard and visa rules, I am sure those terminals will accept a mastercard debit or visa debit if one is put into them.
Also, you can check here: https://www.mastercard.com/us/wce/PDF/Germany.pdf
That the fees for both maestro and mastercard debit are exactly the same, so this is nothing more than merchant ignorance on this subject.
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Hi Windozer,
I tried it myself. The merchant is the one who decide if Mastercard/Visa is accepted or not.
And because in the Netherlands, Maestro/Visa are the common cards most stores are still not accepting Mastercard/Visa. I understand that it should be easy for stores to add this option, but they donât. I hope that this will change but that will take a few years.
Thats why a optional Maestro card or V Pay would be great to have for now.
Understood, I know Here in Portugal and most places I have traveled places that accept maestro MasterCard works, and places that accept MasterCard maestro usually works. But I was not aware of that in Netherlands/Germany. I Know here in Portugal some merchants (stupidly) are only connected to our national network(multibanco) which makes it impossible to accept foreign cards in those places regardless of brand. Really wish these stupid small networks would go away as they usually cost same as the international ones and just add confusion.
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My two cents: it appears Revolut makes money mostly out of those fees each time you pay at a merchant. With a Maestro, they wonât get that anymore and thus itâs against the business model.
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Why not? There are of course merchant fees for Maestro cards that generate an income for the bank / card issuer.
Iâm not a professional, so Iâll leave it to you at the end of the day⌠But it appears to me that the whole reason why the merchants that were mentioned in this thread only accept Maestro & Electron cards is because the fees are drastically lower.
I suspect this could be an issue for Revolut that relies on debit card fees a lot more than traditional banks.
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Hi @Ryan, the merchant fees were higher for Mastercards, that is true. But not anymore because of the regulation.
Also, the debit Mastercard is a relatively new product in Europe. Mastercardâs debit card brand was Maestro for a long time. And banks used to co-brand it with a local payment card network, like Girocard in Germany for example. Merchant fees are the one thing, the licensing fees for card issuers are another. And it probably is still true that issuing Mastercards compared to Maestro cards might be more expensive for the issuer. But I donât know that.
Merchant fees are now regulated. 2% for all debit cards, 3% for all credit cards (that are bank issued). Maestro and debit Mastercard generate the same 2% income from merchant fees here.
But merchants in countries with a traditionally low acceptance rate for the formerly more expensive credit cards are notoriously slow to adapt. Big discounters like Aldi in Germany only recently started to accept them. A merchant still can decide which cards he is going to accept. He can accept debit Mastercards, but deny credit Mastercards for example.
I also think Revolut is not going to introduce a Maestro card, but for slightly different reasons. 
I have heard about these new caps for debit and credit card fees. But these new caps still appear much higher than the Maestro fees. There is a good reason that countries like the Netherlands and Germany still hang on to their Maestro schemes. In the Netherlands a Maestro payment will cost the merchant only 0.05 EUR per transaction, going down to as little as 0.02 EUR for larger transaction volumes. This is so much lower than a Mastercard transaction, making Maestro the preferred method of payment.
But 2 cents per transaction doesnât leave Revolut with much money tto take as their cut. So this could be a reason for Revolut to hold off the introduction of a Maestro card for the time being.
The fees for maestro and mastercard debit are exactly the same. The only place they were lowered was in the UK, which led to banks switching to visa debit and maestro dying overnight there. So if you can see a bank issuing a maestro card it is because it makes them money.
And @Jona the mastercard debit and credit fees are entirely different, they may start with same name but they are not the same.
And yeah @Frank maestro is slightly cheaper for issuers as it doesnât have to have all features and it also doesnât have to have any purchase protection.
Also in Germany, banks differentiate between German issues maestro/vpay debit cards and non German ones. Often charges for international cards are higher for the storeowners. Therefore there are many shops (especially smaller ones, but Iâve had it in supermarket chains as well) that donât accept anything but German issued cards. This is important to keep in mind as the Euro accounts have Lithuanian(?) iban numbers this might cause problems
Sounds like a lawsuit is in order.
Impediment to the EU internal market, and discriminatory against EU citizens (in the Four Freedoms sense.).
Hm, I believe the situation is a little bit different. The German Girocard system, a national system like Maestro, also supports something that is called ELV, literally electronic direct debit. Some merchants only support this direct debit method. It is the cheapest method for them to accept card payments. This payment method is not officially part of the Girocard set of functionalities, but they allow POS terminals to read the data like account number and sort code to do a one time direct debit transaction. International cards donât offer this. So they are not discriminating international cards, it is a different payment method international cards just donât support.
Are you a lawyer? 
If not, should consider a career in corporate law.
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I am not sure if I should feel flattered. Or not. I canât decide .
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Just to clarify what I wrote: all German merchants that accept Maestro / VPay cards of course accept international Maestro / VPay cards under the same conditions. Some merchants only accept Girocards. And some not even this, they only offer the direct debit payment, where neither Maestro nor Girocard processes the payment.
Ok you go ahead sueing basically every shop outside of major metropolitan/touristy areas while Revolut solves the optional maestro card problem. But sarcasm aside, fact is, you cannot live in Germany without having a maestro card. There are some government institutions which only accept payment by maestro/vpay, not even cash
Hi @faberjan, what you need is a Girocard, not Maestro Most official places like town halls only accept Girocard. A Maestro only card (like N26âs Maestro) does not help much there.
Girocard is the payment system owned and operated by German banks, and almost all Girocards are co-barged with V-Pay or Maestro for European / worldwide use. Sometimes there is only the Maestro logo on the front of the card, just the back shows the Girocard logo. But everytime one pays or withdraws money with that card in Germany, the Girocard network is used. Acceptance for Maestro in Germany is a little better, but nowhere as good as Girocard.
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