Cashless? Even in small towns?

There are many shops including butcher shops that will not take cards for purchases less than 10 Euro. We always paid cash in bakeries too unless it was a very large order.

I recently spent three weeks in towns and small cities. Both cash and charge were accepted. I paid mostly by contactless except where I paid cash-- on purpose.

Thank you! Is there a preferred contactless version, like ApplePay?

It is still prudent to have about 20€ of cash on hand, because many places (even in Paris) still have card payment thresholds ranging between 5-15€. It is increasingly rare, and COVID pushed many small shops to finally ditch those thresholds, but it still happens a lot.

To the OP's question about Apple Pay, I used it almost everywhere the summer with ease. Most US credit cards don't have NFC (a method of wireless data transfer), but most French credit cards have it, so the French just hold their cards to the reader and are good to go. Your iPhone (and Android phones) have NFC, so when you use Apple Pay (or Google Pay), you're make a contactless purchase as the French do.

The only time I had trouble with Google Pay was:

1) When I tried to use an AMEX card associated with Google Pay at a merchant that didn't accept that card;

2) At some Casino markets. ( Casino is a brand of supermarket and has nothing to do with a place for gambling. )