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Purchasing OBB Train Tix from the US

Posted by (Washington DC) on

I live in the US and will be traveling to Austria and Hungary this summer. I was planning to purchase multiple OBB train tickets for travel between Budapest, Vienna, Salzburg and Bratislava, but when I tried to purchase tickets on the OBB site, it could not process my credit card or ApplePay. In researching the problem, seems like US credit card payments aren't accepted by the OBB online system.

PayPal is a payment option, but I read there are also frequent problems with that method, too. The chatbot on the Austria tourism website suggests booking tickets on RailEurope, Trainline or Omio. I wanted to book direct from OBB for best prices and to be able to change reservations in country using the OBB app.

Has anyone in the US found any workaround to be able to purchase tickets directly from OBB? If not, any intel on RailEurope, Trainline or Omio, the process for choosing reserved seats on those platforms and in-country flexibility to change reservations through an app?

Thanks in advance for your help.

Posted by
4356 posts

I ran into this same issue at the end of April . After trying four different Visa and Mastercards , I gave up and used PayPal . I had also had travel notifications on the Banks that carried the credit card accounts and they all assured me that they were accepting the cards .PayPal worked perfectly with no problems ., I also had the same problem buying tickets on DB , again PayPal was the answer . Two bookings - DB Paris to Munich and OBB Munich to Vienna

Posted by
26537 posts

I wanted to book direct from OBB for best prices and to be able to
change reservations in country using the OBB app.

For any trip to or from Hungary MAV is generally cheaper than OBB. Sometimes a lot cheaper. The MAV website should work for you, the MAV App probably not, until you reach the EU. Then it will.

If you want to book on OBB, I bet your Debit card will work. Just a guess.

As for changing reservations ... tickets that you can change are substantially more expensive. So much so that I've never bought one.

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