PIN was a

debit card A debit card, also known as a check card or bank card, is a payment card that can be used in place of cash to make purchases. The card usually consists of the bank's name, a card number, the cardholder's name, and an expiration date, on either ...

brand in the

Netherlands , Terminology of the Low Countries, informally Holland, is a country in Northwestern Europe, with Caribbean Netherlands, overseas territories in the Caribbean. It is the largest of the four constituent countries of the Kingdom of the Nether ...

from 1990 until 2012, owned by

Currence Currence is a Dutch trade association set up by banks that coordinates the payment systems in the Netherlands. Its aim is to "facilitate and provide market transparency while maintaining the quality and safety of the payment systems of the Neth ...

. PIN was a

magnetic stripe card The term digital card can refer to a physical item, such as a memory card on a camera, or, increasingly since 2017, to the digital content hosted as a virtual card or cloud card, as a digital virtual representation of a physical card. They shar ...

, which never migrated to the

EMV EMV is a payment method based on a technical standard for smart card, smart payment cards and for payment terminals and automated teller machines which can accept them. EMV stands for "Europay International, Europay, Mastercard, and Visa Inc., ...

chip. It was therefore discontinued in 2012, after the switch-over from magnetic stripe authentication to EMV chip authentication in the Netherlands was completed. PIN was replaced by

Maestro Maestro (; from the Italian '' maestro'' , meaning " master" or "teacher," plural: maestros or maestri) is an honorific title of respect, sometimes abbreviated Mo. The term is most commonly used in the context of Western classical music and oper ...

and

V Pay V Pay is a Single Euro Payments Area (SEPA) debit card for use in Europe, issued by Visa Inc., Visa Europe. It uses the EMV Smart card, chip and Personal identification number, PIN system and can be co-branded with various national debit card sc ...

debit cards, but as most PIN cards were already co-branded with Maestro long before 2012, consumers noticed little of the change. Like in many neighbouring countries, the PIN debit card often doubled as a

cheque guarantee card A cheque guarantee card was an abbreviated portable letter of credit granted by a bank to a qualified depositor in the form of a plastic card that was used in conjunction with a cheque. The scheme provided retailers accepting cheques with grea ...

for

Eurocheque The Eurocheque was a type of cheque used in Europe that was accepted across national borders and which could be written in a variety of currencies. Eurocheques were introduced in 1969 as an alternative to the traveller's cheque and for internatio ...

until those cheques were abolished on 1 January 2002. In contrast to its neighbouring countries (e.g.

Belgium Belgium, officially the Kingdom of Belgium, is a country in Northwestern Europe. Situated in a coastal lowland region known as the Low Countries, it is bordered by the Netherlands to the north, Germany to the east, Luxembourg to the southeas ...

's and

Germany Germany, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It lies between the Baltic Sea and the North Sea to the north and the Alps to the south. Its sixteen States of Germany, constituent states have a total popu ...

Girocard girocard is an interbank network and debit card service in Germany connecting virtually all automated teller machines (ATMs) and banks. It is based on standards and agreements developed by the German Banking Industry Committee. German girocard ...

), the Netherlands has not operated a national debit card network since 2012.

History

In 1987, the Dutch Central Bank investigated the possibility of merging the individual debit card schemes of the various banks in the Netherlands into a single system. This led in 1988 to the foundation of BeaNet, which provided a single network for all electronic payments and cash withdrawals in the Netherlands. Beginning in May 1990, merchants were provided with payment terminals linked to BeaNet, and in the autumn of 1990, BeaNet launched the PIN brand as the singular brand name for electronic payments in the Netherlands. In 1994, BeaNet merged with Eurocard Netherlands and Bankgirocentrale into Interpay, which later became

Equens equensWorldline SE (formerly Equens) is a payment card and payment processor headquartered in Utrecht, Netherlands which serves the European market. Since 2019, it has been a wholly owned subsidiary of Worldline (company), Worldline. As of 2020, ...

. Because of increasingly stringent laws and regulations in the areas of competition and transparency, Interpay decided in 2004 to move all its

payment system A payment system is any system used to settle financial transactions through the transfer of monetary value. This includes the institutions, payment instruments such as payment cards, people, rules, procedures, standards, and technologies that ...

s into a separate company called

. Currence took over PIN in May 2005. In the early 2000s, Currence aligned PIN with the regulations of the SEPA Cards Framework (SCF). A few years later, Currence decided not to move PIN to the

chip. As a consequence, PIN disappeared as a product on 1 January 2012, when the infrastructure for

s was shut down in the Netherlands.

In popular culture

After a successful advertisement campaign in late 1990, PIN quickly became synonymous with

payments in the Netherlands. Already in 1992,

Van Dale ''Van Dale Great Dictionary of the Dutch Language'' (, ), called ' (, ) for short, is the leading dictionary of the Dutch language. The latest edition was published in April 2022. History Van Dale's dictionary was first published after the dea ...

added the

verb A verb is a word that generally conveys an action (''bring'', ''read'', ''walk'', ''run'', ''learn''), an occurrence (''happen'', ''become''), or a state of being (''be'', ''exist'', ''stand''). In the usual description of English, the basic f ...

, meaning "to pay by card", to its dictionary. Other successful campaigns included the card security-oriented campaign with Dutch singer Rob de Nijs and the campaign ("Small amount, PIN allowed"), after the demise of

Chipknip Chipknip (a portmanteau of ''Smart card, chip card'' and ''knip'', Dutch for coin purse, purse) was a Stored-value card, stored-value payment card system used in the Netherlands. Based on the Belgian Proton (debit card), Proton system, it was sta ...

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:PIN (debit card) Debit cards