• Ideas

  • Change Language Preference of Mastercard / Maestro

It would be nice if one could change the language Preference of the Mastercard or Maestro Card temporarily for example on holiday.

In france there was a little problem, when paying contactless, I always had to select the language at the terminal EN or FR. Payments would had been faster, if I had not to select the language every time.

If I had had the possibility to change the language Prefs of the card, I would have changed it to French for some weeks and the terminal would not have asked? And after that back to GER or EN

Is this technically possible? Or is the language hardcoded on the chip?

    Hey Simon!


    The card's language settings are based on that of your app 😄

    This means the following: If I set my phone's settings from Dutch to English then my app's language is turned to English as well. As soon as I use my card somewhere in the Netherlands, the terminal will see my card's language as English 👌

      Hi Koen,

      okay good to know.

      So, if I had changed the language of my phone to french, the card would had been also french, and the language query would not have been asked.

      Unfortunately my french is to bad for using my phone with it, but good enough for reading the screen and buttons on a payment terminal. (oui aucun annuler)

      Maybe, changing the card language based on location, or changing it independently from phone language could be a nice feature? Maybe in the cards menu by allowed countries. Something like Cardlanguage (Same as Phone/ locationbased/select by country) or so. Could be interesting for FR GB IT ES and many more.

      Maybe you could write it on the wishlist?

        Hey Simon, I can definitely write it on there 👍

        Thanks 😄

          You could possibly get around DCC (Dynamic Currency Conversion) in some Countries like Poland or Swiss, when the Language Prefs of the Card are the same as the locals... I'm not sure. Thanks for adding 👏

            11 days later

            I have two bunq Maestro cards, one from way back in April 2016, and one I just ordered under the grace period for still ordering €1/month cards under the old 'bunq more' terms and received this week. I noticed the card terminals "speak English" to me when using the new card, "REMOVE CARD" / "APPROVED" etc, and indeed my iPhone is set to English. However I was not used to this, the old 2016 card always "spoke Dutch". Can you explain this? Does the language switching ability not apply to older cards?

              8 days later

              Just to clarify how this works right now, is the card language “set in stone” based on phone/app language at the time of ordering the card, or will it change along with any changes to phone/app language the next time the card is used at a terminal?


              This recent topic seemed to suggest the former: https://together.bunq.com/topic/herkennen-als-nexderlandse-kaart

                5 days later

                Acually. My app is in English but when paying in France the terminal did say “Betaling succesvol”, so not entirely true. Or is it something recently changed?

                  19 days later

                  Zet hem gewoon altijd op Engels en je probleem is opgelost :)

                    Write a Reply...