Master Card for toll roads

So, other than one was Visa and the other was MC, what was different? Did one have a chip and the other not? Did your Visa work elsewhere? Details please!

Both had chips, and Visa card worked everywhere else, including shops and Uber. However, shops and restaurants wanted a signature rather that my pin.

That is why our cards are call chip and signature.

Using your American credit card on the French autoroute is like playing Russian roulette. One time out of six ends in disaster. The French government privatized the autoroute years ago and the sections are run by different companies. This means they have different rules on accepting foreign credit cards. So even if your card works on one segment, there is no guarantee it will work elsewhere in France. The solution is to ALWAYS use the cash lane (it's marked with a green arrow) and have enough cash with you to pay the toll. Most of the machines that take cash will also have a slot for a credit card, so you can give yours a try and maybe it will work. But if not, at least you have the backup of using cash.

When we drive in Europe we always have a coin purse full of coins for the tolls and a few 5 Euro notes. I would never count on a card working except at a manned booth e.g. a gas station clerk etc. It would be nice if the US caught up to the rest of the world but our banks are committed to remaining obsolete.

I rarely even bother to try my cards on toll roads, since they've so seldom worked. I don't think my chip cards have failed to work anywhere else in France except toll roads.

So did you have to wash cars or something?

one toll station did not accept either card or cash

I've read a rumor on Twitter that some MasterCards allow offline verification with their chip cards, so they work in many of the places other USA cards won't work. Can you tell us which MasterCard and Visa you have?

The signs at the toll booths said "Maestro" which has the same trade mark as Master Card, so I think Master Card has a lock on this provider. T. fro Seattle had a good answer; my Visa Card worked last year in Normandy and Brittany, but not this year in the south. No, I didn't have to wash cars! A somewhat irritated lady came, took my euro 1.50 and returned later with 0.30 change before she opened the gate.

Based on other threads in the past here, T has the most accurate and thorough answer. Which is that sometimes a US card will work, often it won't, and often it may work in one toll plaza and not another. It has little to do with whether it is an EMV (chip) card and all to do with the network used by the toll plaza.

I'm hoping you don't speak French and therefore were blissfully ignorant of all the swear words thrown your way from drivers stuck behind you :-)