Economy Belgian banks to block debit card use outside Europe

Most of the banks in Belgium have recently decided that fraud outside of Europe is too frequent, and on Jan.17, 2011 will prevent their debit cards from working outside of Europe.

This could amount to a substantial inconvenience to travelers.

I don't have permission to post links, but I found a site showing only 7 Belgian banks that will continue allowing debit card use outside of Europe.

WOW! The experiences outside Europe must have been pretty bad.

mikehayes said:

I don't have permission to post links, but I found a site showing only 7 Belgian banks that will continue allowing debit card use outside of Europe.

Click to expand...

Only 7 Belgian banks ? There aren't many more than that ! (once you remove Internet banks and minor banks that do not have ATM's and do not issue debit cards)

I couldn't find the list of banks that won't implement these restrictions, but I read that this decision will affect 97% of Belgian debit cards.

The main Belgian consumer protection agency called the decision absurd. I suppose they could have kept the usage for OECD countries at least.

However I don't see it as a major inconvenient since credit cards will still be working and are more widely accepted.

I'm not able to post my reply. So I've posted it to the pastebin site with article number "mCstM6GM".

Note there are no URLs in that message, but eupedia falsely detects that there is.