That's odd. Have a MasterCard. Or do I? Logged into my account today, and it's a Visa.

[Eug]

No warning at all, I just saw some random posts this morning online saying that their MBNA MasterCard is no longer a MasterCard but all of a sudden is a Visa. I checked mine, and yep, my account is now a Visa.

I got no warning whatsoever. It just happened. No idea what the features and costs will be either, and there's nothing on their website about it either that I can find.

Banks etc. do switch credit cards from time to time, but this is the first time something like this has happened to me.

I guess that explains why I had trouble logging into my account earlier this week, and why my tap-to-pay wasn't working. Even got declined once, but I didn't know why. Now I do.

 

[deadlyapp]

Chase switched all their MCs to Visa a couple years back. No changes or issues for me and it was pretty seamless.

 

[DaveSimmons]

My one MasterCard changed into a Visa 5-10 years ago. It's redundant but I use it on smaller sites more likely to be hacked so if I ever need to invalidate it and get a new number it won't mean updating every place I have recurrent billing (Amazon, Netflix, etc.)

 

[who?]

What do these banks have against Mastercard?

 

[Eug]

What do these banks have against Mastercard?

Not sure but in my card's case, the company was bought out by a bank that prefers Visa.

So I'm not completely surprised it's swapping some stuff to Visa. I'm more surprised in the manner this is happening. A few months ago we got an updated terms & conditions description in the mail, but no explanation as to why. I figured it was just a maintenance update to their T&C, which can happen every so often. And then today we finally found out the real reason why. They just swapped us to Visa without warning us beforehand. Apparently, information packages have now been mailed out or will be mailed out soon but nobody has received theirs yet.

A fair number of people are quite irritated since Costco Canada, Wal-Mart Canada in some locales, and some big-chain grocery stores in Canada don't take Visa at all, while they do take MasterCard. In my case I don't care as much since I had already gotten another MC for other reasons but my wife will have to get a new MC asap because she has no other MC.

BTW, my tap-to-pay hadn't been working consistently and my card was even declined once in the past few weeks, despite my account being in good standing. People had been calling in about the tap-to-pay issues, only to just be told it was some network issue. In retrospect it seems likely this "network issue" is related to the Visa switchover, but they never admitted any of this to anyone.

I can understand their wanting to switch, but why so hush hush about it? Seems very strange.

 

[Elixer]

I went from Visa to MC then back to Visa. This was with Chase, and they did it automatically without asking me.
When it first happened, I go, why, and they said "It was a better fit for my purchasing habits.", when it switched back, I didn't bother asking.

 

[OverVolt]

Isn't master card the one that was like a fake competitor to some other brand.

 

[Paratus]

Citi swapped my Visa to MC awhile back and then sent my wife and I additional Amex cards.

Why I couldn't tell you.

 

[Red Squirrel]

That is rather interesting, so is the existing MC not valid at all or does it still work? I presume you'll be getting a new one in the mail.

Which reminds me I should check what my choicerewards points are at, it's one of those set and forget things, for all I know I can probably get a whole bunch of Home Depot cards or something. I did that with my last credit card before I switched banks and canceled it and got like 600 bucks worth of Home Depot cards.

 

[AdamK47]

USAA did this a couple months ago. They went from MC to Visa. You have to activate the new Visa card for the switch to happen. Until then, you can still use the MC.