Visa Debit and Debit Mastercard to be rolled out in the Netherlands

Visa Debit and Debit Mastercard will be rolled out in the coming years in the Netherlands, making iDEAL, Maestro, and V-pay debit cards a thing of the past, according to the AD. The newspaper has discovered that many Dutch banks are preparing to roll out the new cards in the near future. 

Visa and Mastercard will be more widely accepted across the country

The arrival of Visa Debit and Debit Mastercard is intended to make physical payments in the Netherlands become even easier, since both debit card providers have not been widely accepted in the Netherlands until now. 

However, the new debit cards will work differently from the current iDEAL payment system when it comes to paying online. Unlike the current process where users need to fill in their bank and then go through their banking app to complete the iDEAL process, users will instead use their card number, expiry date and CVV / security number similar to the process with a regular credit card. 

iDEAL is on its way out

The iDEAL payment process is also expected to be phased out after it was purchased by the European Payments Initiative (EPI) in 2023. The initiative is set to create a unified payment platform across the EU bloc, similar to iDEAL. 

The introduction of the new debit cards is also set to make payments more secure. According to Jos van de Kerkhof, country manager of Visa Netherlands, the new cards can be used in “almost all stores” and use a system based on digital tokens rather than saving card information online. “Our figures show that the fraud rate within European online payments has fallen by 50% since the introduction of the tokens”, Van de Kerkhof added.

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