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"it's all mastercard/visa now" shows us he/she likely doesn't understand the vast difference between debit and credit cards. If anyone from the UK who does und
by falcon620 8y ago
"it's all mastercard/visa now" shows us he/she likely doesn't understand the vast difference between debit and credit cards.
If anyone from the UK who does understand that difference would chime in, that would be helpful.
- makomk 8y agoIt's all Mastercard/Visa now in the UK, for both debit and credit cards - and I think Visa is probably the more common of the two these days. Debit cards are pretty much always Visa here and have been for about a decade now.
- falcon620 8y agoYeah, that's not helpful, I'm afraid. Also demonstrably incorrect. Amex is still operating in the UK, for example.
- makomk 8y agoThere is precisely one issuer of non-Mastercard/Visa credit cards in the UK - Amex - and they're not accepted nearly as widely. There are exactly five banks which issue Mastercard debit cards rather than Visa - Virgin Money, Citibank, Clydesdale Bank, Yorkshire Bank, and Metro Bank - and none of them are particularly major players. (I think it was down to three or less at one point; Virgin and Citibank only switched in 2015.) Santander and TSB have apparently announced they're planning to switch to Mastercard debit in the future but currently their customers have Visa debit cards too. Maestro is dead as a dodo here, and the old UK-specific Switch debit card system no longer exists. So in actual fact, people in the UK who're reliant on their debit cards are more likely to be affected by this than people with credit cards too, even if the cards are from the same bank - banks that issue Mastercard credit cards generally use Visa for debit cards.
- daledavies 8y agoYeah I've banked with 4 different people now in the UK and had visa debit cards every time. Anyway I got declined with my visa debit card earlier, tried another payment terminal in the supermarket and it worked fine.
- rahimnathwani 8y agoTransferwise recently started issuing MasterCard debit cards. I was surprised that (i) it's technically a debit card, unlike Revolut's card which is a prepaid card, and (ii) it's issued by Transferwise, not be some bank on their behalf.
- madjam002 8y agoMonzo and Transferwise both issue Mastercard debit cards
- fauigerzigerk 8y ago95% of debit cards in the UK are Visa according to the FT.