[TacoSteemers]

My recent Maestro debit card issued by a Dutch bank didn't work "as a credit card" a few months ago.

I can't find information on debit cards being accepted in place of credit cards, does anyone know a useful search term for that?

[sofixa]

This is entirely a Dutch issue. Their banking system is extremely weird and they consider Visa and MasterCard to be credit cards (even if it literally says "DEBIT" on the card itself), and thus they aren't accepted in a lot of places, only Maestros (which don't work for everything) are. Thankfully that's changing now and my recent trips there didn't require keeping cash to pay.

[bananapub]

this is basically the Netherlands being weird.

almost every bank in almost every european country issues Visa/Mastercard debit cards that can work for ~everything that claims it wants a credit card.

[hnbad]

I just checked all of my German debit cards and they're all Maestro, not Mastercard/Visa. So that's already two countries that don't typically issue compatible debit cards, not to mention the low penetration of credit cards in Germany, too. I probably know more people with PayPal accounts than credit cards.

[bananapub]

germany is also weird in this regard, but I believe as of recently most of the current german Maestro cards are actually on the Mastercard network.