[folmar]

That's great for you, but most countries don't have Maestro so no luck in Sweden. And no, Mastercard does not work nearly as well.

[Tijdreiziger]

I think Swedish banks issue MasterCard or Visa as their standard debit cards, so it seems to me that it should work (although I didn’t have reason to try it when I was there). See e.g.:

https://www.swedbank.se/en/private/cards-and-payment/debit-c...

https://www.handelsbanken.se/en/personal/accounts-cards-and-...

https://www.nordea.se/privat/produkter/kreditkort-bankkort/n...

[eddtests]

There's a big push on Swish which is a mobile banking app and only available to people with BankID - there are smaller places that are Swish-only which means you cannot pay with a card or cash but a Swedish-specific app. I am now with Handelsbanken so this issue is solved but when I first visited it was an issue!

But regardless of those more niche issues, did you try joining a Gym before getting a Swedish card/personnummer?

[folmar]

Nordea -> issues Visa Electron. That is not the same as regular Visa!

Swedbank -> issues Maestro, https://www.swedbank.se/privat/kort/bankkort/bankkort-maestr... (yes, the English page lists only a quarter of the available ones)

Handelsbanken -> issues Maestro, scroll down a bit

I was there a few year ago with both Mastercard and Visa in my pocket and the success rate was 60-70% for that combination (i.e. some one third of the places would not accept either). But steadily improving.