Country-specific Digicards

Dridri

Hey 👋!

I travel often between Spain and The Netherlands and I love that Bunq let’s me have country specific accounts (IBANS). Since I’m a Dutch resident, all my cards are “Dutch cards” which prevents me from paying in some Spanish retailers, such as the Spanish iTunes Store (which I use).

Is there any way bypass this and request a Spanish digital card? I think this would be a logical addition given the possibility of having country-specific IBANs

thijsoost

Adrian You probably don't need a country specific card, you presumably need a Mastercard. In the Netherlands, Maestro cards are being used, but in a lot of other countries you'll need a Mastercard. So if you're using Easy Money and you now have three Maestro cards, I would advice to get rid of one of those and order a Mastercard! And by the way, don't forget to accept Spain to the accepted countries in your card settings!

You could also open a Digicard, which is also a Mastercard. You can use this for online payments, or add it to Google Pay to pay using your phone. Unfortunately, Digicards can't be added to Apple Pay.

Jakob-Y

Adrian Yeah this would be pretty nice, I agree. I'm not sure if bunq is allowed to do this, though. With IBANs, while they have a country-specific code at the beginning, there's no law or contract that is stopping bunq from giving a Finnish customer a Spanish IBAN, and so they do it. But when it comes to the Mastercards, they have to uphold their contractual obligations with Mastercard. Which I don't know about, but it's likely that they wouldn't want just anyone getting a card from a random country.

But, I admit I could be wrong here, and maybe they just didn't bother with this because it's kind of unintuitive for most customers. They probably don't even know that there are different BINs for the different countries and some stores like iTunes as you mentioned or Netflix are using these to check if the card can be used. Exposing more options in the app always has the danger of overwhelming users / giving them more trouble than if you just make the most obvious choice for them without asking. As you see, even a power user like Thijs didn't think about the country BINs.

It would also make it probably possible to use Apple Pay and Google Pay for users in countries where it's not available at bunq. This would be great for users, but there ought to be a reason that it is like it is right now, so maybe also it's not possible because of the contracts with Apple and Google.

Dridri

Thijs Sadly none of the card works. I believe they use the BIN number to ensure the payment method originated in the country of the store, so only my Spanish issued credit card would work. This also applies to Apple Pay.

thijsoost

Jakob Oh really, some companies only allow cards from specific countries?

I've never experienced this myself, I've always been able to pay using my cards in different countries, both online and physically

Dridri

Jakob Makes sense, such a pity! Using PayPal (or alike) is often a workaround but it would be great to have an alternative.

Jakob-Y

Thijs Yep, sometimes that's the case. That's why your bunq Mastercard's PAN begins with 51158002 and mine start with 51158003. Of course they're global cards that generally can be accepted everywhere, but the merchant might decide to decline certain cards if they wish to do so. In the EU it's actually mostly prohibited, but certain services, for example "audiovisual services" are exempt. With iTunes being the prime example.

We should just make the USE 🇪🇺 a reality already.

thijsoost

Adrian Ah okay! Jakob just explained this to me, I didn't know that this was a thing

Sad to see that even within the EU things are still limited to specific countries