Its farewell to your old Maestro

Millions of bank customers will soon be receiving new cash cards. HSBC, RBS/NatWest and Yorkshire and Clydesdale banks will all replace Maestro cash cards this year.

Customers of Yorkshire and Clydesdale banks are being moved to a MasterCard debit card later this year. All other High Street banks have chosen to move their customers to Visa - which gives extra consumer protection on debit cards.

This is because it operates a " chargeback" scheme which will refund customers who have lost money to fraudsters, not received goods already paid for, or suffer unauthorised transactions.

New kid on the block: Maestro is being replaced by Mastercard Debit or Visa debt which has extra customer protection

The protections are similar to those which all credit card users get under section 75 of the Consumer Credit Act.

This month, RBS/Natwest, which has 12.6 million currentaccounts, began writing to customers to announce that Maestro cardswill be replaced with a Visa debit card. HSBC will finish writing toits 9.7 million account holders announcing a similar move this March.

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Co- op Bank finished moving all its customers from Maestro toVisa last year. Once all these cards have been replaced, it will meannone of Britain"s major banks issues Maestro cards.

There were originally two payment systems for debit cardtransactions. In 1988 Midland Bank, National Westminster Bank and RoyalBank of Scotland launched Switch. Maestro, which is owned byMastercard, was launched in 1990. In 2002, Switch became Maestro.

There are 44 million Visa debit cards and 21 million Maestro cards.

j.coney@dailymail.co.uk