Cash vs credit card

Load your credit card onto ApplePay on your phone. I have rarely needed to pull out my credit card anymore. I just use cash for small purchases & for tips for street performers & normal tips.

I’d suggest getting €200, which works out to about €10 a day. Bonnes vacances!

There are a few places where you need cash. the butcher shop we use requires a 15 Euro purchase to use a card. There are other shops with 10 or 15 Euro card limits. And for small purchases like ice cream or crepes or whatever it is handy to have money and I always pay the cab driver from the airport in cash -- we take some home each trip. But you don't need much anymore. so get a little from an ATM on arrival so you have walking around money, but mostly tapping with your phone is perfect.

I've used very little cash on multiple trips to France since covid when people switched over to contactless payment. I like to leave a small tip for housekeeping daily so I usually wind up buying a bottle of water to get coins every few days. I am a solo traveler and last trip I wound up using cash when eating with friends when it seemed too difficult for the restaurant to split the tab. That was an unusual situation. I've never had a market vendor, restaurant or other venue you might use as a tourist not be able to use ApplePay.

I do check with the cab driver when I leave from CDG airport to see if they accept Applepay for the flat rate into Paris. They are supposed to all accept CCs but will sometimes say their terminal is broken and they want cash (tax dodge I assume), so I get that out of the way before I get into the cab.

I generally use ApplePay for everything. If you don't use ApplePay or google pay already, I recommend loading a couple of credit cards onto your phone and practicing at home before you travel. When I was learning, lol, I would go to a young checker at the grocery store because I knew they could talk me thru if I needed help.

As you mention travelling around France, I will mention on recent trips we have needed cash a few times in smaller towns. Once was a taxi in Caen when the driver indicated he was cash only and another time was in Le Havre when the tram ticket system wasn’t accepting credit cards as it was a holiday Monday (verified this was the issue the next day at the Tourist Information office). As others have said, cash is helpful for small purchases too. For 3 weeks €200 would be good.

The times I have needed to use my physical credit card has been for hotel stays and occasional vendors.

I use my smartwatch for 99% of all transactions. Local outdoor markets, a street musician, a 1 euro scarf at a thrift store = cash. I would only get 100 euros and I’m usually in France for a couple of months. I’ve had several circumstances where I was ASKED if I could use a card instead of a 5 euro bill for something that costs 1 or 2 euros. Okay, maybe they were short on change that day…? Restaurant bills have been divided, with each of us paying for what we had, on our smartwatch. In the US I find all this to be the opposite, maybe it comes down to service fees?

Vendors at my market (cheese, butcher, green grocer, bakery, fine foods) prefer that I use my tap payment so they don't have to spend time with cash. Card companies don't charge shops as much as in the US. The only vendor who prefers cash is our newspaper dealer who says he makes nothing if we use a card for our 2-euro weekly paper.