Albert Heijn, the largest chain of supermarkets in The Netherlands, is notorious for not accepting debit cards that aren’t Maestro or V-Pay. This is due to the Dutch system only using Maestro and V-Pay, instead of Mastercard of Visa. Fortunately, Maestro and V-Pay are going to be deprecated in a few months, and therefore merchants have to start accepting Mastercard and Visa. Yesterday, I was at Albert Heijn and I had a feeling. I decided to try my Portuguese debit card, which, being Visa, has always been rejected at Albert Heijn. I was pleasantly surprised when it worked. That is some progress.

Albert Heijn, the largest chain of supermarkets in The Netherlands, is notorious for not accepting debit cards that aren’t Maestro or V-Pay. This is due to the Dutch system only using Maestro and V-Pay, instead of Mastercard of Visa. Fortunately, Maestro and V-Pay are going to be deprecated in a few months, and therefore merchants have to start accepting Mastercard and Visa.

Yesterday, I was at Albert Heijn and I had a feeling. I decided to try my Portuguese debit card, which, being Visa, has always been rejected at Albert Heijn. I was pleasantly surprised when it worked. That is some progress.