Maestro is a multi-national debit card

Debit card

A debit card is a plastic card that provides the cardholder electronic access to his or her bank account/s at a financial institution...

 service owned by MasterCard

MasterCard

Mastercard Incorporated or MasterCard Worldwide is an American multinational financial services corporation with its headquarters in the MasterCard International Global Headquarters, Purchase, Harrison, New York, United States...

, and was founded in 1990. Maestro cards are obtained from associate banks and can be linked to the card holder's current account, or they can be prepaid cards. The cardholder presents the card at the point of sale

Point of sale

Point of sale or checkout is the location where a transaction occurs...

 (POS) and this is swiped through the terminal by the assistant or the customer or inserted into a chip and PIN

Chip and PIN

Chip and PIN is the brandname adopted by the banking industries in the United Kingdom and Ireland for the rollout of the EMV smartcard payment system for credit, debit and ATM cards.- History :...

 device. The payment is authorised by the card issuer to ensure that the cardholder has sufficient funds in their account to make the purchase and the cardholder confirms the payment by either signing the sales receipt or entering their 4 to 6-digit PIN

Personal identification number

A personal identification number is a secret numeric password shared between a user and a system that can be used to authenticate the user to the system. Typically, the user is required to provide a non-confidential user identifier or token and a confidential PIN to gain access to the system...

.

Within the EU and certain other countries, Maestro is MasterCard's main debit brand and is the equivalent of signature debit card which does not require electronic authorisation, similar to the Visa Debit

Visa Debit

Visa Debit is a major debit card issued by Visa in the United Kingdom, the Republic of Ireland and other nations of the European Union. Prior to October 2004, the debit card was known as Visa Delta. Since June 2009, the major banks in the UK have begun issuing Visa Debit. Barclays, Bank of...

 card.