Maestro (debit card)
The Maestro logo
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| Product type | Debit card |
|---|---|
| Owner | Mastercard |
| Country | United States |
| Introduced | 1992 |
| Related brands | Debit Mastercard |
| Markets | Worldwide |
| Website | www |
Maestro (stylized as maestro) is a multi-national debit card service owned by Mastercard that was founded in 1992. Maestro cards are obtained from associate banks and can be linked to the card holder's current account, or they can be prepaid cards. The cardholder presents the card at the point of sale (POS) and this is swiped through the payment terminal by the assistant or the customer, inserted into a chip and PIN device or read by a contactless reader. The payment is authorized by the card issuer to ensure that the cardholder has sufficient funds in their account to make the purchase and the cardholder confirms the payment by either signing the sales receipt or entering their 4 to 6-digit PIN, except with contactless transactions below a specified amount for which no further verification is required.
Maestro often requires on-line electronic authorization for every transaction, although Mastercard's rules permit the establishment of floor limits on Maestro EMV chip transactions only. Not only must the information stored in either the chip or the magnetic stripe be read, this has to be sent from the merchant to the issuing bank, the issuing bank then has to respond with an affirmative authorization. If the information is not read, the issuer will decline the transaction, regardless of any disposable amount on the connected account, except in the Asia Pacific region, where manual keyed entry is permitted under some circumstances. This is different from most other debit and credit cards, where the information can be entered manually into the terminal (i.e. by punching the 13 to 19 digits and the expiry date on the terminal) and still be approved by the issuer or stand-in processor. In most countries, other than those specified in Mastercard's rules, a PIN rather than a signature is always required to authorise a Maestro transaction, except where no CVM is required.
Maestro is accepted at around fifteen million point of sale outlets.
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Wikipedia