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I studied abroad in France in 2012--at this time, all European card readers had been chip-based for quite a while and my US credit card didn't have one. I could

I studied abroad in France in 2012--at this time, all European card readers had been chip-based for quite a while and my US credit card didn't have one. I couldn't figure out how to use them and many store clerks had no idea what to do with my magnetic-strip credit card. I went to England in 2019, at which point cards in the US had been updated to use magnetic stripes, and everyone was using tap-to-pay. It turns out my credit card had tap-to-pay support as well but it wasn't widely used in the US (or at least in my sphere). Now it finally seems common-enough here. I'm planning another trip to Europe in the next year... Really eager to see what payments look like nowadays.

vishnugupta 5y ago
It’s tap to pay almost everywhere in the Netherlands. Apple Pay works like charm.
user_7832 5y ago
Can't speak for other countries, but at least here in the Netherlands, chip based cards are still the main type of card, though most of these cards support contactless payment as well. Almost all PoSes also support Apple/Google pay too which is actually pretty convenient. However, I think many (supermarket) PoSes also support magnetic - they appear to have 2 card slots on them.
- throwaway473825 5y ago
  Can't speak for the Netherlands, but contactless payments seem to dominate in many European countries: https://www.nets.eu/Media-and-press/news/Pages/The-DACH-region-catches-up-and-reaches-similarly-high-level-for-contactless-payments-as-in-the-Nordics.aspx https://www.nets.eu/Media-and-press/news/Pages/The-DACH-regi...
jurmous 5y ago
We in The Netherlands are one of the most cashless societies in Europe. We mostly pay with our mobiles or contactless with banking cards. We even are "going Dutch" sharing our bills with what we call a Tikkie: One person pays the bill and then we send over instant messaging our payment request for money which can be payed directly with one click and authentication in banking app. One thing that is annoying for foreigners with credit cards is that they are barely accepted here. We work mostly with Maestro and almost all Dutch e-commerce sites work with Ideal which directly link to the banking apps of the local banks. My wallet does not contain any cash anymore and just an ID and OV card. https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/dutch-payment-landscape-one-most-cashless-europe-carole-cissé/ https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/dutch-payment-landscape-one-m...
- hk__2 5y ago
  Can’t speak for other countries, but in France and Northern Italy this is the same: contactless cards everywhere. I live in France and --I have to check my banking app to check this because I don’t remember-- the last time I went to a cash machine was almost one year ago.
  - SSLy 5y ago
    Same for Poland, and what I've heard, Sweden.
  - theshrike79 5y ago
    Ditto for Finland. Contactless cards or mobile phone payments work everywhere. I haven't touched cash ever since covid hit, and very rarely before it.
  - mrep 5y ago
    I'm in the US and the only time I can remember going to an ATM in the past 5 years is because farmers markets sometimes give you discounts > credit card rewards for cash and weed shops cannot use banks so you have to pay cash.
    - dzhiurgis 5y ago
      IMO farmers markets would disappear if they stopped using cash. It's basically synonym for tax avoidance sprinkled with some fraudulent claims how your honey cures everything.
      - mrep 5y ago
        I totally agree farmers markets are all about tax avoidance. They would charge me the flat dollar amount for cash but then add in the tax when I used a card. No way they are paying taxes on that cash transaction.
- larkost 5y ago
  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.
eldaisfish 5y ago
worth mentioning that this seems a problem limited to the US. Even in Canada, the smallest of towns will have contactless payment. Many Canadians don't really use cash because interac/credit cards have all supported tap to pay for over a decade now.
- throwaway894345 5y ago
  To be clear, the US has contactless payments all over and probably has had them since ~2015, it just took some time for people to "discover" them.
  - adventured 5y ago
    People will still be talking about how the US doesn't have contactless payments another five years from now. It's an inexpensive way to feel good.
    - cromka 5y ago
      > People will still be talking about how the US doesn't have contactless payments another five years from now. It's an inexpensive way to feel good. From my personal experience, there were roughly about 80% of shops in NYC, up until the beginning of pandemic, that did not accept contactless or where it did not work. One particular supermarket next door had the proper POS for 3 years and it still wouldn't work even this May when I left. The restaurants were even worse.
  - eldaisfish 5y ago
    my point is that contactless and chip-cards have been around for so long outside the US that magnetic stripes are the oddity. Even the smallest of places with electronic payments will support either chip cards or contactless tap or often both. Near the US border in Canada, many shops have machines that read magnetic stripes. These machines cater almost exclusively to American travellers.
  - brimble 5y ago
    I've only just gotten used to the slide-it-in-the-slot kind. Whatever that's called. The thing that's replacing the magnetic stripes, more or less. I always forget about contactless. I think all my cards can do it? Not knowing for sure is why I never try, and just stick the card in the slot, which always works. I think I've paid with my phone one time ever. For some reason I can't bring myself to trust it to work 100% of the time so I can leave my cards at home, at which point I may as well just use a card since I have 'em anyway. I guess I could start carrying phone + cash as a backup and skip the cards, but that's even less convenient. I do activate the payment screen (iPhone) all the time by accident, though I couldn't tell you how. (I'm not even that old...)
bayindirh 5y ago
In Turkey you can move around almost cashless now. Taxis started to accept cards in droves due to the pandemic and some municipalities are integrating VISA/Master infra to the mass transport, so you can just travel with your card. Besides that, literally everywhere allows contactless payments. Even Visa/Master is changing their card designs to move vital information to the back of the card to prevent information theft via hidden cameras or a very keen eye.
- throwaway894345 5y ago
  Same in the US. I virtually never use cash. The only real problem I run into is the occasional "open bar"--drinks are free but there's still an etiquette that you should leave a tip which generally means cash.
  - cromka 5y ago
    > drinks are free but there's still an etiquette that you should leave a tip which generally means cash. In my experience on such rare few occasions I was able to tip with Venmo.
    - throwaway894345 5y ago
      Is there a "tip with venmo" poster displayed or do you have to ask the bartender their venmo account name? I've never seen this before, but agreed that it's rare.
      - digisign 5y ago
        A potentially malicious third-party selling your financial transaction history is not the best choice... by far.
        throwaway894345 5y ago
        I wasn't arguing in favor of Venmo, but are VISA and MasterCard really better options in this regard?
rozenmd 5y ago
I've lived in France since September, and I think I've used cash... once? You can live entirely off using your phone/credit card to pay these days (if you don't frequent "cash-only" shops).
Medowar 5y ago
..just dont go to Germany. We are not very advanced in that regard. Of course huge amounts of stores offer contactless paying, but generally Cash is still dominant around here. Change is slow, and currently, Cash is still king, especially with small or street merchants.
- BiteCode_dev 5y ago
  Since I'm dreading the coming of a cashless society, I'm really rooting for the German to push back against it as long as they can so that I can keep using notes and coins in euros.
- dash2 5y ago
  I always found that so weird! The Exportweltmeister, producing some of the most advanced equipment... and in many places you can't pay with a card at all. Why do you think it is?
  - dathinab 5y ago
    Machinery needs to be lubricated to run well. For many small businesses non-tax registered money is the lub which makes them run well. Jokes aside the price of getting a card terminal where for many businesses completely unattractive for a long time and often still are if put in context to the number of people which will use it. I know one local takeaway which stopped accepting card payment after their terminal broke recently, as it wasn't worth it to buy a new one. Instead they now allow sending money by PayPal, but non-advertised and mainly for a single specific big recurring customer and sometimes if someone doesn't has cash with them.
  - yccs27 5y ago
    We Germans seem to love our cold hard cash, so the incentive to get a card reader is lower. There are even automatic coin counting machines in some self-checkout desks...
- TillE 5y ago
  To clarify, you can rely on nearly any supermarket or drug store to accept credit cards / contactless these days. Daily shopping is no problem. Smaller stores or restaurants, forget it. Bring cash.
newroman 5y ago
I tend to not carry a card anymore, just my phone (Romania). I don't remember the last time I went to a shop that didn't accept card. Everyone who accepts cards accepts contactless.
tuyiown 5y ago
For france: contactless on phone should be ok with widely used card providers (VISA) Beware, since covid, use of cash has dramatically fallen, last month a restaurant struggled to give me 2€ change, they didn't have 2€ in cash ! Paying in cash with the right amount should never be a problem though.
- jacquesm 5y ago
  That may have been a signal that you should tip more.
  - sbcd 5y ago
    France is not America, thank you very much. I have never seen people leave tips here.
nly 5y ago
The reverse problem is also true. As a Brit traveling in the US I was dumbfounded when a payment terminal asked for my zip code...of course i didn't have one and my card was rejected.
Kognito 5y ago
Haven’t used cash since the pandemic started in the UK. Covid encouraged even market traders and street food vendors to move to contactless payments - which were just about the final holdouts.
- dzhiurgis 5y ago
  NZ'er here - haven't used cash for years, except when you sell something online or buy drugs. Spend is kinda hilarious - in supermarket checkout "can I pay $150 in cash and remaining using card?" just so you don't have to deal with coins.
  - rodgerd 5y ago
    Same, but it's largely been that way since the early 90s. It's weird getting pitches from US FinTechs that are solving problems that literally only exist because of how painfully backward that US financial infrastructure is.
  - fennecfoxy 5y ago
    Also a kiwi (although living in UK) I've used contactless since it was first available in NZ (ages ago) but when I returned late 2019 I found that contactless was no longer accepted at certain places, like liquor stores. Too many munters nicking cards to buy booze with I guess. I can't wait to live in a 100% cashless society but I do think that the process should be refined (especially for phone payments). Atm I tap and often have no idea if I'm really paying exactly what I should be. Credit card/debit numbers should only ever be temporary and for a given amount to a given merchant (like how my bank requires generating an OTP when adding a new payee). Confirmation that we are paying x merchant £y is definitely required. Current system is really weak in that if someone has my credit/debit number they can arbitrarily charge me, in the UK if someone has my sort code + bank they can use that at a business to create a debit request and I get arbitrarily charged.

vishnugupta 5y ago

It’s tap to pay almost everywhere in the Netherlands. Apple Pay works like charm.

user_7832 5y ago

Can't speak for other countries, but at least here in the Netherlands, chip based cards are still the main type of card, though most of these cards support contactless payment as well. Almost all PoSes also support Apple/Google pay too which is actually pretty convenient. However, I think many (supermarket) PoSes also support magnetic - they appear to have 2 card slots on them.

throwaway473825 5y ago
Can't speak for the Netherlands, but contactless payments seem to dominate in many European countries: https://www.nets.eu/Media-and-press/news/Pages/The-DACH-region-catches-up-and-reaches-similarly-high-level-for-contactless-payments-as-in-the-Nordics.aspx https://www.nets.eu/Media-and-press/news/Pages/The-DACH-regi...

jurmous 5y ago

We in The Netherlands are one of the most cashless societies in Europe. We mostly pay with our mobiles or contactless with banking cards. We even are "going Dutch" sharing our bills with what we call a Tikkie: One person pays the bill and then we send over instant messaging our payment request for money which can be payed directly with one click and authentication in banking app. One thing that is annoying for foreigners with credit cards is that they are barely accepted here. We work mostly with Maestro and almost all Dutch e-commerce sites work with Ideal which directly link to the banking apps of the local banks. My wallet does not contain any cash anymore and just an ID and OV card. https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/dutch-payment-landscape-one-most-cashless-europe-carole-cissé/ https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/dutch-payment-landscape-one-m...

hk__2 5y ago
Can’t speak for other countries, but in France and Northern Italy this is the same: contactless cards everywhere. I live in France and --I have to check my banking app to check this because I don’t remember-- the last time I went to a cash machine was almost one year ago.
- SSLy 5y ago
  Same for Poland, and what I've heard, Sweden.
- theshrike79 5y ago
  Ditto for Finland. Contactless cards or mobile phone payments work everywhere. I haven't touched cash ever since covid hit, and very rarely before it.
- mrep 5y ago
  I'm in the US and the only time I can remember going to an ATM in the past 5 years is because farmers markets sometimes give you discounts > credit card rewards for cash and weed shops cannot use banks so you have to pay cash.
  - dzhiurgis 5y ago
    IMO farmers markets would disappear if they stopped using cash. It's basically synonym for tax avoidance sprinkled with some fraudulent claims how your honey cures everything.
    - mrep 5y ago
      I totally agree farmers markets are all about tax avoidance. They would charge me the flat dollar amount for cash but then add in the tax when I used a card. No way they are paying taxes on that cash transaction.
larkost 5y ago
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.

eldaisfish 5y ago

worth mentioning that this seems a problem limited to the US. Even in Canada, the smallest of towns will have contactless payment. Many Canadians don't really use cash because interac/credit cards have all supported tap to pay for over a decade now.

throwaway894345 5y ago
To be clear, the US has contactless payments all over and probably has had them since ~2015, it just took some time for people to "discover" them.
- adventured 5y ago
  People will still be talking about how the US doesn't have contactless payments another five years from now. It's an inexpensive way to feel good.
  - cromka 5y ago
    > People will still be talking about how the US doesn't have contactless payments another five years from now. It's an inexpensive way to feel good. From my personal experience, there were roughly about 80% of shops in NYC, up until the beginning of pandemic, that did not accept contactless or where it did not work. One particular supermarket next door had the proper POS for 3 years and it still wouldn't work even this May when I left. The restaurants were even worse.
- eldaisfish 5y ago
  my point is that contactless and chip-cards have been around for so long outside the US that magnetic stripes are the oddity. Even the smallest of places with electronic payments will support either chip cards or contactless tap or often both. Near the US border in Canada, many shops have machines that read magnetic stripes. These machines cater almost exclusively to American travellers.
- brimble 5y ago
  I've only just gotten used to the slide-it-in-the-slot kind. Whatever that's called. The thing that's replacing the magnetic stripes, more or less. I always forget about contactless. I think all my cards can do it? Not knowing for sure is why I never try, and just stick the card in the slot, which always works. I think I've paid with my phone one time ever. For some reason I can't bring myself to trust it to work 100% of the time so I can leave my cards at home, at which point I may as well just use a card since I have 'em anyway. I guess I could start carrying phone + cash as a backup and skip the cards, but that's even less convenient. I do activate the payment screen (iPhone) all the time by accident, though I couldn't tell you how. (I'm not even that old...)

bayindirh 5y ago

In Turkey you can move around almost cashless now. Taxis started to accept cards in droves due to the pandemic and some municipalities are integrating VISA/Master infra to the mass transport, so you can just travel with your card. Besides that, literally everywhere allows contactless payments. Even Visa/Master is changing their card designs to move vital information to the back of the card to prevent information theft via hidden cameras or a very keen eye.

throwaway894345 5y ago
Same in the US. I virtually never use cash. The only real problem I run into is the occasional "open bar"--drinks are free but there's still an etiquette that you should leave a tip which generally means cash.
- cromka 5y ago
  > drinks are free but there's still an etiquette that you should leave a tip which generally means cash. In my experience on such rare few occasions I was able to tip with Venmo.
  - throwaway894345 5y ago
    Is there a "tip with venmo" poster displayed or do you have to ask the bartender their venmo account name? I've never seen this before, but agreed that it's rare.
    - digisign 5y ago
      A potentially malicious third-party selling your financial transaction history is not the best choice... by far.
      - throwaway894345 5y ago
        I wasn't arguing in favor of Venmo, but are VISA and MasterCard really better options in this regard?

rozenmd 5y ago

I've lived in France since September, and I think I've used cash... once? You can live entirely off using your phone/credit card to pay these days (if you don't frequent "cash-only" shops).

Medowar 5y ago

..just dont go to Germany. We are not very advanced in that regard. Of course huge amounts of stores offer contactless paying, but generally Cash is still dominant around here. Change is slow, and currently, Cash is still king, especially with small or street merchants.

BiteCode_dev 5y ago
Since I'm dreading the coming of a cashless society, I'm really rooting for the German to push back against it as long as they can so that I can keep using notes and coins in euros.
dash2 5y ago
I always found that so weird! The Exportweltmeister, producing some of the most advanced equipment... and in many places you can't pay with a card at all. Why do you think it is?
- dathinab 5y ago
  Machinery needs to be lubricated to run well. For many small businesses non-tax registered money is the lub which makes them run well. Jokes aside the price of getting a card terminal where for many businesses completely unattractive for a long time and often still are if put in context to the number of people which will use it. I know one local takeaway which stopped accepting card payment after their terminal broke recently, as it wasn't worth it to buy a new one. Instead they now allow sending money by PayPal, but non-advertised and mainly for a single specific big recurring customer and sometimes if someone doesn't has cash with them.
- yccs27 5y ago
  We Germans seem to love our cold hard cash, so the incentive to get a card reader is lower. There are even automatic coin counting machines in some self-checkout desks...
TillE 5y ago
To clarify, you can rely on nearly any supermarket or drug store to accept credit cards / contactless these days. Daily shopping is no problem. Smaller stores or restaurants, forget it. Bring cash.

newroman 5y ago

I tend to not carry a card anymore, just my phone (Romania). I don't remember the last time I went to a shop that didn't accept card. Everyone who accepts cards accepts contactless.

tuyiown 5y ago

For france: contactless on phone should be ok with widely used card providers (VISA) Beware, since covid, use of cash has dramatically fallen, last month a restaurant struggled to give me 2€ change, they didn't have 2€ in cash ! Paying in cash with the right amount should never be a problem though.

jacquesm 5y ago
That may have been a signal that you should tip more.
- sbcd 5y ago
  France is not America, thank you very much. I have never seen people leave tips here.

nly 5y ago

The reverse problem is also true. As a Brit traveling in the US I was dumbfounded when a payment terminal asked for my zip code...of course i didn't have one and my card was rejected.

Kognito 5y ago

Haven’t used cash since the pandemic started in the UK. Covid encouraged even market traders and street food vendors to move to contactless payments - which were just about the final holdouts.

dzhiurgis 5y ago
NZ'er here - haven't used cash for years, except when you sell something online or buy drugs. Spend is kinda hilarious - in supermarket checkout "can I pay $150 in cash and remaining using card?" just so you don't have to deal with coins.
- rodgerd 5y ago
  Same, but it's largely been that way since the early 90s. It's weird getting pitches from US FinTechs that are solving problems that literally only exist because of how painfully backward that US financial infrastructure is.
- fennecfoxy 5y ago
  Also a kiwi (although living in UK) I've used contactless since it was first available in NZ (ages ago) but when I returned late 2019 I found that contactless was no longer accepted at certain places, like liquor stores. Too many munters nicking cards to buy booze with I guess. I can't wait to live in a 100% cashless society but I do think that the process should be refined (especially for phone payments). Atm I tap and often have no idea if I'm really paying exactly what I should be. Credit card/debit numbers should only ever be temporary and for a given amount to a given merchant (like how my bank requires generating an OTP when adding a new payee). Confirmation that we are paying x merchant £y is definitely required. Current system is really weak in that if someone has my credit/debit number they can arbitrarily charge me, in the UK if someone has my sort code + bank they can use that at a business to create a debit request and I get arbitrarily charged.