Sorry for being vague; just left it "europe" since I've moved around a bit since getting here. I'm currently in Croatia, where it seems only restaurants and so

Sorry for being vague; just left it "europe" since I've moved around a bit since getting here. I'm currently in Croatia, where it seems only restaurants and some grocery stores frequently take cards; I paid for an invoice at a local bank (Raiffeisenbank) yesterday that only took cash, which I thought was hilariously ironic. For what it's worth, my stay in Iceland (3 months) was absolutely fantastic when it came to taking card payments. On the other hand, the Netherlands (Amsterdam, 3 months) often only took Maestro-only (or sometimes Visa-only) in the cases where vendors even took cards. Likewise in England (Sheffield, 3 months) many vendors only took cash, and were mightily confused by American cards (especially one requiring pin + signature). I also had a brief stay in Italy (Naples, 1 week) where I found one restaurant that took any kind of card; everywhere else was cash-only. This has been my experience. I didn't realize how commonplace card transactions actually were in America until I realized how rare they were in the places I've lived since. I hate paying with cash because it's several extra mental steps to withdraw $X / maintain $X on hand / track expenditures / count up payments + check change / etc. It's so much easier and faster to use a card, so I hope Visa (or whomever, I don't have a preference as long as it's a card) lobbies for more widespread acceptance worldwide. If that requires killing off cash, I wouldn't have a problem with that!