Cashless was a new UK norm to me

Good to know. Our trip isn’t until April, which by that time, the UK might be totally cashless.

Supermarkets are never reluctant to take cash.

Most card payments I make are contactless unless it’s over £100, when I need to pop the PIN number in. You would be better served with a contactless card with a PIN number as a backup.

The only time I have seen someone having to sign for a card purchase in the past decade was an American in France.

You do still need cash as some places don’t take cards or you may want to leave a tip or pay for a public toilet etc.

This matches my experience in May in London where many stores/restaurants had signs "cards only."

On the other hand, with a contactless card I never had to sign....... Maybe upgrade your credit card???

This was my experience in May of this year. Plenty of card only signs and both U.K. hotels had a no cash policy as well.

On our two recent trips to the UK I rarely saw 'no cash' signs, but contactless is so easy we used cards almost exclusively, including on the tube in place of Oyster cards. I do have a PIN for my card, but on the (very rare) occasions I couldn't use contactless, such as paying the hotel bill, it just reverts to signature, which was no problem.

I do have a backup card just in case, and I carry a little cash for s fee places they don't take card.

However, one hotel had to run my card 4 times at 100 pounds a shot. The clerk said that because I did not have a pin, she had to run my card these 4 times in order for their bank to successfully charge a painless credit card

Something odd going on here. There are 'chip and sign' cards in the UK issued to people that for what ever reason cannot use PIN-based cards. It is illegal for them to be treated differently on equality grounds. It is a sign of bad training or bad policy on behalf of the hotel.

@Marco. I suspect the member of staff was putting the charges through as a contactless payment hence the £100 at a time. She probably has not experienced a swipe and sign card as they are not that common so assumed that contactless was the only option if the OP didn't have a PIN. There doesn't appear anything nefarious about it and the OP has confirmed that the payments went through as described.

It is not the way you are supposed to go about it and discriminatory. However, on this particular occasion it does seem to have worked out with no further issue and only minor inconvenience.

For the OP: (and others)

• You probably will have no luck checking with your credit card and getting a PIN. Yes, you may be offered a PIN, but it will be for cash advances at an ATM. For a card with a PIN, you will need another card, one of the few in the US that are Chip and PIN, and maybe one of the rare ones that are PIN priority.
• One thing you can do, is ask your card issuer about contactless (there will be a little wi-fi looking symbol on the card). With this, you could have "tapped" most of your purchases (up to 100 GBP), no signature, no PIN, just tap and go.

I agree that the hotel worker was using a work around because they didn't know what else to do.

I don't have a pin for my CC, but mostly used the simple tap for smallish purchases, and when that wasn't available I was asked to sign. This was in May/June of this year.

In Canada, all CCs and DCs are issued with PINs and, for the past decade or so, have included Contactless Pay as well.

Made mention of experiencing this issue last November. Thus the reason for requesting and receiving a tap and go debit card for my July
sojourn. Made the trip a breeze.

Withdrew a £10 note at a Lloyds Bank ATM. Did have about £6 in coinage. Still have the note and the coinage. Good to go for the next trip!

Claudia we put the £ sign before the amount in UK
I have gone back to using cash for most small purchases and have never had any trouble spending it although i did buy a train ticket at £2.30 and a tram ticket at £2.80 using Contactless today
I did have trouble using my card for small amounts at the start of the pandemic

Roger learn something new everyday. I’ll edit.

As stated earlier, if you have a U.S. credit card you have little chance of getting a PIN for purchases. Anyone with any experience knows how to handle a chip & signature card. (The clerk at your hotel did not know what she was doing.)

You are better off requestng a contactless card from your credit card issuer. It's easy to use for anything up to 100 GBP. Or, set up your current card with either Google Pay or Apple Pay.

I took 300 GBP out of the cash machine just prior to the pandemic. I think I've spent about 50 GBP in cash and that was in cabs. And I've spent about three months in the UK since last November.

We are halfway through a one month stay in the UK, the first two weeks spent in a city in Dorset. We’ve used £, chip and tap with our credit card at a variety of places with no issues. We’ve only seen a couple of signs that said “card only” at country refreshment stands.

Just returned from 11 days in London. Never went to an ATM to get banknotes. Only used my phone. Never needed a PIN although AMEX issued us one. Wished we had cash for tipping, but that was the only use we had for cash.

We spent a month in England in May. We used £’s and card. Never had trouble using cash. There was even a few places that had signs that said cash only.

I was in London July 5-18 and had no problem using cash. A couple of pubs were card only but that was know big deal.