New issuance of Maestro in Europe has been halted since July 2023, and Mastercard is transitioning existing cards to Debit Mastercard as they expire. Even in a card-centric market like Slovenia, Maestro is a shrinking legacy method, so it should be considered only as a complementary method for existing cardholders, not as a growth channel.

In practice, rather than designing a new standalone Maestro integration, it makes more sense to build a general card acceptance system that includes Debit Mastercard and process remaining Maestro transactions alongside it. Please review it in combination with the other methods in the comparison table below.

Online Maestro payments are approved the same way as regular cards: after entering card details, the transaction goes through the issuing bank's 3DS2 authentication (PSD2 Strong Customer Authentication, SCA). However, since new issuance of the card has stopped, it's natural for its share of transactions to decline over time, and it's important to also have a general card acceptance path in place so that payments don't break when the same customer switches to a Debit Mastercard upon reissuance.

You can explore whether remaining Maestro transactions can be processed within Hecto Financial's card acceptance system. Since this is a method with halted new issuance, please confirm terms (settlement cycle, fees, currency options) as part of general card acceptance, including Debit Mastercard, rather than for Maestro alone.

• Business registration country

  Confirm contract eligibility for businesses registered in Korea

• Sales channels

  Integration method and priority vary depending on your online sales channel mix, such as owned storefronts, marketplaces, or mobile apps

• Product categories

  Check in advance whether your products fall under categories restricted by the Maestro operator's merchant policy

• EU regulatory compliance

  Confirm compliance with EU payment regulations such as PSD2 and SEPA (see official sources below)

Maestro transaction proceeds are also collected in euros (EUR), converted by Hecto Financial, and then paid out to the Korean merchant in a chosen currency of USD, KRW, or JPY. Because this is a wind-down method, the settlement volume itself may not be large, and it's worth confirming refund procedures based on the original transaction, keeping in mind that by the time of a refund, the customer's card may have already been replaced with a Debit Mastercard.

• Bank of Slovenia (Banka Slovenije)Official information on Slovenia's payment systems and related regulations. If this page's content differs from the actual regulations, the official source takes precedence.