Blog
20. January 2020

The neon Mastercard®: one card for everything

What’s so great about the neon Mastercard, you ask? Well, it makes your life easier. There’s no longer any reason to use a different card: you never need to think about which card to pay with and your bulging wallet will thank you, too.

One card for everything

So, how’s that supposed to work?!

In a nutshell, you can use your neon Mastercard to make payments or withdraw money wherever you like. You can use it in all four corners of the world (with zero currency conversion surcharges since January 2020!), for contactless payments and online, too.
Unlike with credit cards, the transactions you make with your neon Mastercard are debited from your account right away, not in one go at the end of the month. That’s great news for you: you can keep your expenses under control and avoid having a monster bill sprung on you at month-end. The neon Mastercard is more versatile than a Maestro card. It is accepted by shops and ATMs around the world, plus you can use it for online shopping: there’s a 16-digit card number on the back plus the CVC/security code that you normally need to make a payment.

What else do I need to know?

A card that you can use in all kinds of ways needs to be protected in all kinds of ways, too. Of course, we take a no-holds-barred approach here. As usual, you’ve got your own PIN and your neon Mastercard is protected with 3D Secure for online shopping. You might notice that the card says «prepaid» on the back, which is how our card product is defined by Mastercard. The important thing for you to note is that you can use the card like any other and all the transactions are debited from your neon account right away.

The card costs 20 CHF. In January 2020, we changed the fees we charge for international transactions: from now on, you won’t pay a currency conversion surcharge on your payments. Otherwise, everything is the same as you’d expect from neon: payments within Switzerland are free, and you get two free withdrawals a month in Switzerland. After that, they cost 2 CHF. For overseas withdrawals, we waive the 2 CHF so you just pay a fee of 1.5%. 

I’ve still got a Maestro card – what’s going to happen to it?

If you opened your neon account before the middle of March 2019, you’ll have received a Maestro card. This is being superseded by the new Mastercard and will soon be deactivated. From then on, you’ll just use the Mastercard. We’d suggest you show off your Maestro in a pretty frame. After all, it’s a limited edition piece and, thanks to this card, you’ll always be able to boast that you were one of the first neon users :) 

Who issues the card?

The card issuer is Hypothekarbank Lenzburg, and the processor is NiD.

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