paying for stuff: logistics

Visa is Decidedly NOT Everywhere We Are
For the last month, we’ve had the pleasure, read pain, of paying for almost everything in cash.
Most merchants and many hotels only take cash, which is okay if you can plan ahead.  The disturbing thing is the places that accept credit cards, but not American cards.  It was not possible to use a card to buy a train or subway ticket in France, Italy or Austria and in Romania our cards did not work anywhere, including the large grocery store and large electronics store we went to.

	Success rate with our Mastercard debit and Visa credit cards
Iceland	Merchants were happy to accept cards, even for small amounts and retry the card, if necessary.
France	Nothing worked in train ticket machines.  The train ticket counter accepted the debit card (sometimes after multiple attempts) and rarely accepted the credit card card.
Italy	Cards worked except for the train ticket machines.
Austria	Cards worked except for the train and subway ticket machines.
Hungary	all cash
Romania	Nothing worked but the cash machine, thankfully
Turkey	Visa worked at the hotel, else all cash.
Tunisia	all cash
Morocco	One of four hotels accepted the card, else all cash.

Because of the mixed success (inconsistent failures) of using the cards in France we actually got replacement cards, thinking that it was the combination of our old (worn out…) cards and less sensitive reader machines.  The new cards made no difference though. 

American cards have a magnetic strip and European cards have … some kind of chip.
As train tickets for two are often over 100 Euro, this can be a pain.  Near Nice we had to buy a ticket at a small station that had no ticket agent and a machine which wouldn’t accept our bills.  Fortunately some nice Germans bought our ticket and let us pay them back.

Exact Change is Annoying

The other thing we’ve found is that starting in Tunisia (actually in Corsica also), people don’t have enough money to give you change.  When all your money comes out of the ATM in relatively large denominations, it is really hard to pay for small things, and most of what we buy other than hotels and bus tickets is cheap.  Several times we’ve walked around, with our wallets full but the sense that we might as well be penniless for all of our purchasing power.

Currencies

We brought some American 20’s which we’ve used only to buy our entry visas for Turkey, where the price for Americans was actually in USD.  Otherwise we have taken all of our money from ATMs, without exchanging any currency.

We looked into the cards which advertise a lack of foreign transaction fees, but decided they were not worthwhile.  Our bank charges us only the 1% foreign transaction fee that Visa and Mastercard charge and because the ATMs don’t have a per-usage fee it’s actually less annoying than paying a few bucks to get out money in the US because any ATM will work.

Arriving by train in Budapest in the dark, it was hard to find an ATM, but otherwise they have been plentiful.
In Turkey, Tunisia and Morocco people are more than happy to take Euro, and it might have been nice to keep some for this purpose, but we didn't.

Oh and no one uses traveler's checks anymore.