Banking

Observations

Compared to Iran, and what I've seen on other countries, there are some differences in the banking system in the Netherlands. The main difference is credit cards are not common in here and people mostly use debit cards.

The second difference is that Dutch banks used to use Maestro instead of Visa and Mastercard and because of that, iDeal is the common payment gateway in the Netherlands. MasterCard is planned to be replacing Maestro from July 2023.

iDeal

In the absence of Visa and Mastercard, iDeal is the payment gateway in the Netherlands. It doesn't abstract away the bank from the payment process, so the payment site you're using must also support your bank as well. And so you need to select your bank from the list of banks when you're paying with iDeal.

It wouldn't be a problem with common Dutch banks but for banks like Revolut, I've seen places that did not support it when I didn't have a Dutch bank as my primary bank.

Tikkie

Tikkie is a payment service that is used to send payment requests to other people. It's mostly used to split bills between friends or transfer small amounts of money to each other.

International Payments

If you don't have Visa or Mastercard, you can use Revolut virtual cards. As a plus, you can also get single use virtual cards that are useful when you don't trust the website you're paying on.

Direct Debit

Direct debit is a common way of paying for subscriptions in the Netherlands. There are different ways that companies use to set up direct debit:

• iDeal
• SEPA Direct Debit: You can set up SEPA Direct Debit by providing your IBAN to the company.

ATMs

geldmaat is the common ATM in the Netherlands. You can use it to withdraw cash from your bank account or deposit cash to your bank account if your bank supports it. You can use their location guide to find the nearest ATMs and their supported services.

Cash Exchange

GWK Travelex has a lot of branches but their exchange rates and fees are not good. I've found Pott Change to have better rates.