Maestro cards in Taipei!?

I am coming to Taipei soon and was wondering if i can use my maestro card from the UK to draw out local currency. Usually, i would use a Visa but i dont have mine right now!! I am kinda worried, as i am in China and dont even know if i can get NT here if needed. I have already been told that RMB is useless in Taiwan.

Holy shit dude where have you been? No you can not use RMB here nor can you get NT. ummmm China and Taiwan have this thingy where they are kinda of mad at each other with the missles and the soldiers so …

Seriously international banking cards work just fine here as does western union.

just a suggestion, brush up on yout international politiks :wink:

Down Shifty - down boy! The man was only asking a question, he wasn’t proposing bi-lateral relations. For the record my Maestro card works fine to get money out, though the balance always shows up as 44,000,000 NTD, which would be fine if it was true. But it’s not.

My (UK) HSBC Maestro card doesn’t work in most ATM machines here. The one place it always works is the China Trust machines in 7-11.

Look at the back of your card to see what ATM networks it’s on. The most common here are Plus and Cirrus. Most ATMs here support international cards though a few banks like Hwatai only support the local FISCard network.

Maestro’s for buying stuff, isn’t it? It’s the Cirrus one that matters, and many machines take it.

dont worry shifty i am fully aware of the cross strait tensions, having lived in Taiwan for 3 years. My maestro card is Natwest and says Cirrus on the back, so hopefully it will be fine!! My chinese card has “union pay” written on it, so is that the western union thing talked about earlier??

Thanks for all your help by the way :slight_smile:

actually i read recently that they are proposing to make RMB changeable in TAiwan, because they are expecting up to 2000 mainland china tourists daily sooon.

the charters will come and be open to taiwanese and chinese passport holders . they will start with twice a week per airline, and then daily one flight, then more.

and later all peoples will be able to fly these non stop routes. And RMB will be changeable to NT dollar in TAiwan and NTD will be changeable to RMB in china.

that day is coming soon, but dont hold your breath tho.

may be a few years yet

[quote=“wayneowen”]dont worry shifty i am fully aware of the cross strait tensions, having lived in Taiwan for 3 years. My maestro card is Natwest and says Cirrus on the back, so hopefully it will be fine!! My chinese card has “union pay” written on it, so is that the western union thing talked about earlier??

Thanks for all your help by the way :slight_smile:[/quote]

NatWest + Cirrus is about the best combination for almost universal access to UK funds from Taiwanese ATMs (lucky you!) Maestro is only supported in the UK and a few European countries so you’ll need to select Cirrus if prompted by the ATM.

cheers again for all your replies, i cant wait until direct flights are available, the whole hong kong thing sucks!!