In the 21st century, non-cash payments have become so firmly established in the life of a modern person that it is already difficult to imagine modern commodity circulation without them. The most popular brands at the moment are Mastercard and Maestro. These payment cards are quite similar, but they have a number of significant differences.
What is Maestro and Mastercard
Mastercard is an international payment system, headquartered in the United States, and its turnover in 2013 exceeded $ 8 trillion. It is represented on the market by several brands such as MasterCard, Maestro, MasterCard Electronic, Cirrus and Mondex. This system of non-cash payments is presented in more than 2010 countries of the world.
Maestro is one of the services of the Mastercard company. It is implemented in the form of international debit cards. They have a limited set of functions and, as a rule, serve only for payments in stores. The appearance of Mestro cards does not have specific standards, as it is determined by an intermediary company that issues credit cards at the local level.
Key differences between Mastercard and Maestro
The names shown are only indications of different levels of the same brand. Thus, Mastercard is a huge international corporation, which is represented in more than two hundred countries around the world, and Maestro is one of its most popular services.
The history of the Mastercard company dates back to far 1966, long before the era of electronic payments. While the Maesto service was created in 1990, just to conquer a new market for cashless payments.
Visually, the Mastercard and Maestro logos are very similar, as they relate to the same corporation. The concern's logo consists of two slightly overlapping circles in red and yellow, with the inscription “MasterCard” on them. The payment system logo has a similar design with the Maestro inscription on the same two circles, but the circles themselves are in different colors - blue and red.
To carry out transactions using Maestro, only online authorization is allowed. That is, for settlements using this payment card, it is necessary to swipe it with a magnetic stripe in the terminal of the outlet, after which the card holder must confirm the payment using a PIN code or by signing on the check. While access to other Mastercard services is possible using offline authorization.
