what’s the difference from Mastercard and Maestro, why these two circuit exits and why Mastercard cards have 16 digits while Maestro have 15? (And respectively Visa from VisaElectron which are the the same but from another company)
In: Economics
Maestro was created as a joint partnership between Mastercard and Eurocard about 30 years ago. Eventually Mastercard bought Eurocard and merged the two organizations. Mastercard Debit is more common now. But some people were already used to using Maestro and liked the brand name. So they kept it around.
Maestro has 13 to 19 digits (not just 15). There is no standard for digits. Different credit card companies use different digits.
Visa had Visa Debit. You would go to the store, they could make a carbon copy of your card, and charge you later. The machines they used were called zip zap machines. This worked fine for credit cards because the whole point was to loan you money and bill you at the end of the month. But with debit cards, it’s bad to have a delay between the time you buy something and when the money leaves your account.
So Visa bought a company called Interlink. This company allowed for electronic verification. You scanned your credit card, it sent the signal to your bank right away, and then approved the transaction. Because this was a fancy new electronic product (it was 30 years ago), they named it Visa Electron. Nowadays credit card companies use even fancier technology like chip and pin. Generally speaking, people now prefer to use the Visa Debit brand name instead of Visa Electron. But again, some people in some countries like the old brand name and stick with it.
I’m not sure about the details exactly, but I also think there was some anti-trust lawsuits involved as well. Visa and Mastercard get sued for monopolistic practices more than pretty much any other set of companies.
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