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by TazeTSchnitzel 853 days ago
Europe used to have two significant card networks of its own: Maestro (owned by Mastercard) and Visa Europe (previously owned by various European banks). But Maestro is dead now and, a few years ago, Visa Europe merged into Visa.

There were a bunch of national networks but they're slowly dying I think. The UK's Switch debit card network got rebranded as Maestro and then killed, for example. The UK still has something called Link however (used for ATM withdrawals and I think nothing else).
2 comments
rcMgD2BwE72F 853 days ago
>There were a bunch of national networks but they're slowly dying I think.

True. It's CB in France https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Groupement_des_Cartes_Bancaire...

Fewer and fewer banks supports it. It's obvious when looking at the neobanks' offers: https://www.zupimages.net/up/24/07/zbua.png ("Réseau CB: Oui [yes] / Non [no]"). A shame as the whole French payment network now relies almost solely on Visa, a $500T US giant.

link
riffraff 853 days ago
the italian "pagobancomat" system[0] (pay from your CC with an ATM card) is still alive and well, all ATMs and POS support it together with visa/mastercard. There's also an online payment system but I've not seen it used.

Most plastic you get these days supports both that and visa/maestro.

[0] an extension of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bancomat_(interbank_network)

link