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Comment by dan_mctree | Hacker News Reader

If you only offer creditcard payments and want international customers, you will missing out on a lot of customers. For example in the Netherlands, iDeal is the standard of payment and many Dutch customers do not have other payment options easily available.

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Trying to support international payment methods in general is a nightmare and the Dutch system is one of the most idiosyncratic. Not saying it's bad for users, but I remember integration of support across different banks being daunting (this was several years ago so things may have improved).

Does it mean that mostly, they don't have any Visa or Mastercard?

Indeed. Our debit cards are visa/mastercard, but such cards have numbers like NL01BANK012345678901 (IBAN). Credit cards have no additional benefit in day-to-day life but do have an additional cost. Ideal is actually ideal for consumers, as the merchant doesn't ever receive personal information. For small amounts, it's only a fingerprint away.

It seems to become a European standard: https://nltimes.nl/2023/04/25/dutch-payment-processor-ideal-...

Correction. Our debit cards are only mastercard maestro not visa. Maestro is depricated, and soon everyone in EU will have proper international debit cards.

Yeah, only a very low percentage of people will have a creditcard... 99% of dutch online payments will be made using IDeal, which is cheap (free for user, ~20-30ct for the seller) and instant. And works with every bank in the country (and some international ones like Revolut and N26)

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