Switch is a debit card in the United Kingdom. It is a sister to the Solo debit card.
Switch was launched in 1988 by Midland Bank, National Westminster Bank and the Royal Bank of Scotland as a multifunction cheque guarantee and cash card. The brand was merged with Maestro, an international debit card brand owned by MasterCard, in 2002. This merger has been referred to as the "penguin wedding," with distinctive advertisements of penguins in different international settings created by Joel Veitch. Since then, banks have been migrating customers from Switch to Maestro.[1]
The merger was also intended to increase the acceptance of foreign Maestro cards in the UK. However, despite the Maestro brand name, point of sale transactions in the UK are still processed by Switch Card Services Limited. Consequently many retailers who advertise that they accept Maestro can only accept UK-issued cards, i.e. former Switch cards. Although the brand-name and company is now Maestro, the old Switch logo and Switch cards are still accepted in many good retailers. Still, this situation can cause some confusion for visitors to the UK who may have their Maestro cards declined at the point of sale.
Switch/Maestro cards issued by certain banks, notably the HSBC group (which has now replaced Switch with Visa Debit), carried an issue number on the bottom of the card corresponding to the number of times a card had been issued on a particular account. This was usually because the current account number the card is linked to actually formed a large part of the card number, and therefore the card number could not be readily changed in case of loss or the card expiring.
Despite not being used as a brand for a number of years, the term "Switch" is sometimes used on e-commerce sites (or by members of staff and older customers of banks that formerly offered Switch cards) to refer to Maestro cards or as a generic name for debit cards, much to the confusion of younger members of the public and customers of the many banks that never issued Switch cards.
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