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V PAY is a type of debit card issued by Visa Europe. It provides a fully chip & PIN based card that may be co-branded with various national debit card schemes, such as the German Girocard or Italy's PagoBancomat. V PAY is designed to provide a SEPA-compliant card that enables use across the whole of Europe, and to compete with MasterCard's similar Maestro debit card product. V PAY began to be accepted at merchants in France and Greece in 2005, and acceptance has since expanded to more European countries. By 2010, 14,000,000 V PAY cards had been issued.
V PAY, unlike its main competitor Maestro, may not be used in non-chip and PIN environments, limiting its acceptance to those countries and merchants that have upgraded to this system, and increasing the safety against fraud. Unlike Maestro, which is issued and accepted globally, V PAY is designed as a specifically European product, and is not issued or accepted outside European countries (though it is issued by the European branch of US Military-affiliated Service Credit Union, making the card available to membership-eligible US residents.)