EC cards that will be issued from July 2023 will have to do without the Maestro function.
When the payment service provider Mastercard announced last autumn that it would discontinue its “Maestro” system in July 2023, some already saw it as the “Off for the EC card”.
However, the Federal Association of German Banks then said: The EC cards – which have been called giro cards since 2007 – will by no means be abolished. Instead, there should be new functions that enable payments in online retail, for example.
No giro cards with Maestro function from July 2023
However, this requires a change. And while some banks are making good progress with this, others are now getting a delay. This is reported by the online portal t3n.de.
The Maestro function had previously ensured that Germans could also pay abroad with their Girocard. Because Maestro was not compatible with many online portals, the system operator Mastercard decided to abolish it.
The schedule for this had previously been as follows: From July 2023, no more giro cards with a Maestro function should be issued. The cards that are then already in circulation – around 100 million in Germany alone – should remain fully functional until the end of their term. And because the giro cards are usually valid for four years, the cards with a Maestro function would finally have been history in the summer of 2027.
Banks get more time
In fact, it will probably take a little longer before the Maestro function will disappear completely. Because like that Handelsblatt reports, Mastercard is granting some banks a delay in making the necessary changeover.
“In the event of technical challenges, we work with our partners to find migration plans that can also include transitional periods,” says the financial service provider. At the Frankfurter Volksbank, cards with a Maestro function will probably still be in use until the end of 2027, at the GLS-Bank the issuing of cards will not be discontinued until July 2023, but only in October.
With Maestro gone, most banks are moving to Mastercard’s “Mastercard” debit card feature, or Visa’s equivalent. This means that the giro cards can also be used abroad in the future – and offer additional options for online shopping, for example.
Savings banks: 60 percent opted for Girocard with Mastercard
Especially far are noisy with the changeover Handelsblatt the savings banks. The Sparkasse Siegen has been using the “Mastercard” function for two years now, and all 170,000 giro cards in circulation are now equipped with it. In contrast, the Sparkasse Niederbayern-Mitte has been using the Visa system since the beginning of December, and a total of 110,000 cards are gradually being replaced here.
According to savings bank payment service provider S-Payment, around 60 percent of savings banks have opted for a Girocard with Mastercard, and 40 percent will work with Visa in the future.
And some banks actually don’t have to deal with an approaching changeover at all at the moment: there are currently no plans to abolish V-Pay, the Visa counterpart to Mastercard’s Maestro function.
The system is used, for example, by the Berliner Sparkasse – the second largest savings bank in Germany. And for the time being, nothing will change for the 60 percent of the giro cards from Volks- und Raiffeisenbanken that work with V-Pay. (jfw)