Maestro Cards & The Issue number

Lorfy

Hi,

This is a little bit of a random question but really could do with some feedback from everyone.

We are in the process of setting up an online store. We have bit of a concern when it comes to Maestro Card payment. Currently our payment gateway terminal is not intelligent enough to detect the different requirement when processing different cards. Therefore it has to show all fields. This includes the Issue field to reflect Switch/Maestro uses. This is the issue number the amount of times you have received a card e.g 1,2,3 etc.

The problem is that for all other customers Visa, Mastercard they have to enter a 0 into this field to activate the payment. It is not the most ideal situation which leads to my question.

We are thinking of deleting the maestro card altogether as i'm pretty sure Visa Mastercard consume most of the card market.

Out of interest does anyone use Maestro in the UK and also If you have experience of using it in Europe (by means of actually living in the country do you use Maestro and does it have the issue number.

Many thanks for all your responses it is greatly appreciated.

Cris
PS i know Maestro is the debit form of Mastercard.

Plxply

Maestro is for the most part being phased out in the UK and is being replaced with Debit Mastercard. There are certain banks that still use it but most have either moved to Visa Debit or Debit Mastercard. You may encounter problems with international cards though as I believe Maestro is still issued commonly within Europe.

Hazzanet

Plxply wrote: »

I believe Maestro is still issued commonly within Europe.

Indeed, but I believe that they pretty much all have the 16 digit PAN and no issue number.

The issue number is a holdover from the days when we had Switch (which was bought out by Mastercard/Maestro) as the switch card number was made up of a current account sort code and account number, preceeded by four digits and trailed by one making a 19 digit PAN.

EG. If you had account number 60-00-00 01234567 at Natwest, your card number would be something like

675960000001234567890

The problem came when a card was lost/stolen as the PAN couldn't easily be changed, so they reissued the card, gave a new expiry date and incremented the issue number by one.

I don't know of any UK card issuer that still does it this way (HSBC and NatWest that did it this way have gone over to Visa Debit now).

guesswho2000

Hazzanet wrote: »

Indeed, but I believe that they pretty much all have the 16 digit PAN and no issue number.

The issue number is a holdover from the days when we had Switch (which was bought out by Mastercard/Maestro) as the switch card number was made up of a current account sort code and account number, preceeded by four digits and trailed by one making a 19 digit PAN.

EG. If you had account number 60-00-00 01234567 at Natwest, your card number would be something like

675960000001234567890

The problem came when a card was lost/stolen as the PAN couldn't easily be changed, so they reissued the card, gave a new expiry date and incremented the issue number by one.

I don't know of any UK card issuer that still does it this way (HSBC and NatWest that did it this way have gone over to Visa Debit now).

NatWest & RBS stopped doing this before they axed Maestro, my last Maestro cards from both simply had sixteen digit numbers, suggesting they may have been using the MasterCard system underneath (UK Maestro was essentially the Switch card system with a different name, hence issues sometimes experienced using international Maestro cards in the UK).

Lorfy

Hi

Many thanks, this is all helpful stuff. Would anyone have any experience using Maestro Cards around Europe and if they could confirm if they are still using an Issue Number on them that would great. I know Maestro is supported heavily in Europe.

The fact they moved over to the Master card processing is great news but your be surprised when i've asked Banks / Payment gateways like Realex and even Maestro support they are all unsure as they only comment on their individual countries and an issue number means different things to other countries e.g start date is also referred to as a issue number.

Thanks again for all the posts much appreciated.

Regards

Cris

Toe-Jam

Maestro cards don't have an issue number anymore, they haven't since the Switch network was closed last year. They all have 16 digits and an expiry.

Northern
Bank of Ireland
Clydesdale
Yorkshire bank

are the only banks that still use Maestro.

Maestro.

Toe-Jam wrote: »

Maestro cards don't have an issue number anymore, they haven't since the Switch network was closed last year. They all have 16 digits and an expiry.

Northern
Bank of Ireland
Clydesdale
Yorkshire bank

are the only banks that still use Maestro.

I believe this to be true. A Maestro card may as well be a debit MasterCard now although annoyingly some online retailers still won't accept them. I wanted to keep my Maestro from Clydesdale now that it has 16 digits, but apart from Amazon it's hard to find online retailers that will routinely accept it so I gave in and got Clydesdale to issue me with a Debit MasterCard.

Lorfy

I don't suppose you know if this is the same for Maestro cards within Europe / World.

Do they still require the issue number or are they simply the 16 digit and expiry date only.

Thanks

Cris

savagej

http://www.mastercard.com/us/merchant/pdf/ORME-Entire_Manual.pdf

This is the full set of instructions.

It is more complicated than just the number of digits (16-19 and some begin with a 5 and some with a 6), as some numbers in the International Maestro range are Diners Club cards and UK Maestro needs to be processed differently from International Maestro which preceed international rules.

If it is just to get the details to feed into your terminal manually and that makes the decision on what to do with the card number, then does your merchant state you may need an issue number for an International Maestro Card?

If you are validating details yourself then you will need professional assistance from your merchant with full processing instructions.

Toe-Jam

nice bit of light reading there savagej,

however whether they start with a 5 or a 6 is irrelevant, they all have 16 digits and an expiry number now as the products and takeovers were all aligned last year.

So the answer is yes it is the same for the european cards.

Toe-Jam

Toe-Jam wrote: »

Maestro cards don't have an issue number anymore, they haven't since the Switch network was closed last year. They all have 16 digits and an expiry.

Northern
Bank of Ireland
Clydesdale
Yorkshire bank

are the only banks that still use Maestro.

Just an update on this, Bank of Ireland are phasing out in ~June this year moving to visa debit.