For Americans visiting the Netherlands one word of caution: many of the pay terminals (especially the parking ones) do not seem to like U.S. cards, and even some the vendors from Europe. When we were on vacation there a few years ago it was a roulette game to figure out if parking meters would take my card or that of my father in law (from Hungary).
The problem is that they have a local exchange there, and do not have cross agreements with all of the payment vendors (not at the Visa level, but bellow that). It was annoying, and caused us a lot of hassle. I am not sure how we could have avoided it.
Most shops in the Netherlands work with maestro of mastercard and vpay of Visa. It is directly linked to our bank credit and has low transaction fees. Maestro and vpay is accepted all over the world. We work directly with IBAN numbers and not with credit card types like mostly in the world.
Normal Mastercard/visa credit don’t work here since shops have to pay way higher transaction fees while almost nobody uses them.
It will be phased out though in 2023 to Mastercard debit and visa debit so likely in the future Netherlands payment system will be more aligned with what other countries use.
That it erodes the position of EU banks in favor of Visa and Mastercard. I have no problem with them facilitating the tech, but I do have a problem with them usurping the position of the banks. The EU is already too dependent on the United States in this manner, no need to make it worse.
For Canadians - they've got no issue with almost all of our cards. It's just the American ones that run into issues, so your chip & pin and tap features will work splendidly abroad.
The problem is that they have a local exchange there, and do not have cross agreements with all of the payment vendors (not at the Visa level, but bellow that). It was annoying, and caused us a lot of hassle. I am not sure how we could have avoided it.