Maestro is a debit card service owned by MasterCard. It was founded in 1990. The cards of this service are issued by the banks associated with it. They can be linked to the cardholder’s account and can also be prepaid cards.
Payment procedure
The cardholder presents the card at the cash desk. The card is swiped with a magnetic stripe in the terminal by an employee/customer, or inserted into the device for authorization with a chip and a PIN code. The issuing bank checks the card for the presence of sufficient funds in the account to pay for the purchase. The cardholder then confirms the transaction by signing the check or entering a PIN code.
MasterCard and Maestro – the difference
Maestro is not a payment system, but a debit card service from MasterCard. Maestro cards are issued by banks that work with the MC payment system. In addition to this brand, MC have others such as Cirrus and Mondex. Also, the logo of this payment system is different from MasterCard. In the 1st case, these are red and blue intersecting circles, in the 2nd case, red and yellow.
