Conversely in Sweden all debit cards are VISA/MasterCard so credit cards work literally everywhere

Debit cards in The Netherlands are almost exclusively MaestroCard, which is why it's so difficult to find a place that accepts credit card. It's also why The Netherlands developed it's own national online payment system - people didn't have a lot of existing options.

Same in the UK.

> Everyone uses the European debit cards with chip/pin

Actually, everyone uses Dutch debit cards with Chip+PIN. Colleagues and I had trouble using debit cards from other EU countries on our last visit.

Maestro/VPay cards should work fine. Debit MasterCard/Visa Debit is the issue.

The problem is every UK bank or fintech prepaid is either Visa debit or MasterCard debit. maestro only exists on some kid cards 16-18yr old limit.

Ah, I see, but VPay is SEPA (Euros only), so the people I was travelling with, from Britain, Denmark, Sweden were out of luck.

Really? I spent a week there recently and used my US Visa card widely.

The supermarkets process the transactions as cash on the credit card. I paid something like 5% in fees because of that (on a UK VISA card, about 15 years ago).

In Finland there is no real differences between credit or debit