I've been in Portugal sometimes, and to me MB was synonymous with "we accept credit cards", and in fact it is in the sense that you can pay using Visa or Mastercard in those shops. But, is it a standalone system that doesn't require anything outside Portugal in order to work? With their own non-Visa credit cards? And can you use them when abroad in the EU, for example?

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tiagod 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

It's a standalone network. Most Portuguese cards are also VISA/Mastercard, but payment terminals may only have a contract with Multibanco, meaning only Portuguese cards are accepted. It's quite common for foreign cards not to be accepted.

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pjmlp 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Nope, it has nothing to do with credit cards, although it also accepts them.

It is majorly used for debit cards, and similar in use to the famous Minitel in France.

You can use it to load pre-pay phones, or other kinds of rechargeable services, buy tickets for public transport and various kinds of shows, pay water, electricity, taxes, among other services.

There is now an app used to pay on shops via QR codes.

You can also pay online with one time cards, that are generated for a single transaction.

Outside Portugal it is a regular debit card.

When you access Multibanco with foreign cards, you can only withdraw money usually.

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rkomorn 2 hours ago | parent [-]

I'm French and living in Portugal and I do not get the Minitel comparison. Minitel was basically a Telnet device to various services' servers.

That said, I love MB and MB Way. What an upgrade it's been over paying for stuff in the US (where I lived before moving to Portugal).

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pjmlp an hour ago | parent [-]

From what I know from Minitel, the same Internet before the Internet applies.

I was buying tickets on MB, before it became common place in the Internet.

	▲	rkomorn 29 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		Could you search for tickets and such on MB? All the stuff I'm familiar with is only payments (with entity and reference). Now that I think about it, you could search for things on Minitel but I don't remember if payments were made as phone charges or if they could also be done with transfers. Minitel was so prohibitively expensive to use (just about every service cost multiple francs per minute), I didn't do much with it.