method of payment

Hello from Wisconsin,
I can't speak for all credit cards. Mine have never charged a fee for foreign purchases (Citi, Capital One, and UWCU). In fact I have received excellent exchange rates which is where many foreign transactions hide their fees. They may say the have no charge but the exchange rate is terrible.

Can't help you on phones but if you can get wifi your in.

wayneiNWI

It depends on your actual credit card. I always have a Mastercard, VISA and AMEX. AMEX is being accepted more and more in Europe. My Delta AMEX, Nordstrom VISA, and REI Mastercard do not charge foreign transaction fees. My LLBEAN Mastercard does, so we don't use it in Europe. The last time we were in Switzerland was just 2 days and we did not need any Swiss Francs. In fact, we used euros at a market for some sandwiches, but we were in Basel, close to the border. In general, you will find credit cards very widely accepted, especially in the 3 cities you specified.

Hi Kathryn. As to your phone question.. When you have access to wi-fi (virtually all hotels, plus other places like airports, train stations, many trains while riding, McDonalds, etc.) you can access websites and email just like you were at home. Have a great trip!

Roaming charges for cell phones if you don't have a data plan and a travel plan for the time you are out of the country can be amazingly steep. I'd explore what options you have for a data plan/telephone plan that covers you on your trip.

Kathryn, who is your cell phone provider? That could depend on how you use your phones over there. I have a T-Mobile plan, which provides a free international data plan and I only pay .25 a minute for calls. However, other companies are not as generous. Verizon and AT&T both offer an international plan, but you must pay for it. I don't remember the charges for AT&T but Verizon's is $100/month or $10 a day.

So you have several options.

• You use the plan from your provider and pay any extra fees (keeping in mind that this could be more expensive, depending on the provider.
• You turn on Airplane mode once you land and try to rely on wifi. That's risky because if you're out walking and you have not downloaded any maps, you won't be able to the GPS on your phone unless you hit a wifi hotspot, which are not that common. And if something comes up and you need to use a phone, your roaming charges would most probably be very expensive (as Janet also said).
• You can purchase a physical SIM card, which is exchanged for the SIM card from your provider. This will give you a European phone number and a certain amount of data to use. They're relatively inexpensive and usually offer decent coverage. The drawback is that you cannot use your own phone's apps and phone unless you switch the SIMs out when you need it.
• You can purchase an eSIM data plan, which is an embedded SIM in your phone, which is placed there digitally. The advantage is that it enables you to switch back and forth from your plan to the eSIM plan without much fuss. The disadvantage is that most eSIMs do not provide phone numbers, although you can always use WhatsApp or FaceTime for calling with wifi. The other disadvantage is that your phone must be unlocked to use it, and must be a newer phone (4-5 years old or newer).

With regards to credit cards, check your own cards on the individual websites and they will tell you if your card charges a foreign transaction fee. Most of them do, so I would strongly suggest obtaining one that does not if you don't have one.

And yes, credit cards are accepted pretty much everyplace. Half the time I don't even bother to get any money from an ATM, as I wind up having to bring most of it back with me.

An important point for Verizon, the charge for international use is $10/per 24 hour period/per phone. We use it rarely, but should we need cell service, I turn off "airplane" mode which starts my 24 hour period. So if I start at 3pm, it's good until 3pm the next day. We typically try to get by just with hotel and random places' wifi.

Good point, jules - it definitely pays to be aware of all the rules for using cell phones overseas!

One source of no-foreign-transaction-fee credit cards is Capital One (though it's possible some of those cards do charge fees; you must check carefully). Some airlines have offered no-fee cards in the past, and it used to be possible to get such a card with no annual fee; I don't know whether that's still the case.

It's also helpful to have at least one ATM card that doesn't hit you with fees when you use an overseas ATM. You can get no-fee ATM cards by setting up a Capital One 360 account (easy to do online) or a Charles Schwab account. Some credit unions also don't charge fees for use of foreign ATMs.

I don't believe temporarily replacing your regular phone SIM with a European SIM wipes out the apps you have on your phone; there's not all that much memory on a SIM. I am not remotely an expert on smartphones, but Google says a SIM primarily stores contacts and perhaps some text messages, and I think you have the option of storing your contacts in the phone's memory instead.

I agree with almost all of Mardee's answer, except:

The drawback is that you cannot use your own phone's apps and phone unless you switch the SIMs out when you need it.

Changing SIM cards (whether physical or esim) does not affect the apps that are on a phone. The SIM card merely controls which network(s) the phone is connecting to for cellular data, SMS messaging, and/or voice calls, but apps and other data on a phone are not stored on a SIM card.

If you have a Verizon SIM card in the US and use, say, an Orange SIM card in France (whether physical or eSIM) all the apps (and photos, downloaded music, podcasts, etc.) on your phone are still there.

The whole advantage, really, of buying a foreign SIM card on a smartphone you already have is that it allows you to continue to use the apps you already have. If you're used to using Google Maps to navigate in the US, you'll have Google Maps on your phone in France; if you like to post photos to your account on Instagram in the US, you can continue to do so in France, etc.

@Andrew WOW!!, game changer! I didn't know that. I thought putting in a SIM in Europe was like starting with a new phone. Love this. Question, what about my phone number if people from U.S. call or text?

Changing SIM cards (whether physical or esim) does not affect the apps that are on a phone.

Andrew, yes, I goofed and wrote without thinking (that should be inscribed on my gravestone!). 😂 Thank you for the correction!

Putting in a different SIM changes your phone number. What I've done is buy a French SIM, buy service for it, and put it into an old phone I had lying around. That means I don't have to mess with my US cell phone.

So, one problem we had on our recent trip to Portugal was that, Nordstrom VISA was sending us fraud alerts and when they weren't answered, they'd freeze the account. Because they were sent by text but not imessage, I was not getting them when I was on wifi. The only time I got them was when I had paid for cell service for that day. So, if I purchase a SIM in Europe and I have a different phone number, I still won't be able to get messages that aren't sent as an imessage, correct?

Now, Nordstrom VISA says that they were putting a new fraud system in and this shouldn't happen to us again, it still seems to be a limitation that I would not get texts to my personal phone number, Correct?

@Mardee -- the rest of the answer was so thoughtfully composed that I figured it must have been a typo, but wanted to point out just in case!

@jules m -- It's true that the principal downside of using a foreign SIM is that it does make direct calls and texts from US numbers more difficult. You will either have a foreign phone number (if you buy a physical SIM) or no phone number (typically if you buy an eSIM, which will only come with data).

This means phone calls definitely will not come through and texts -- specifically, SMS messages -- will not show up either.

iMessage in my experience is hit and go (it has to do with how it's configured it seems, but I've had mixed results). Other messaging services that are truly independent of your phone number -- e.g. Whatsapp, Facebook Messenger, Telegram, Instagram messaging, Line, Twitter -- will all function perfectly fine. And all other apps that are not directly related to your phone number (email, camera, photos, news apps, etc.) will function identically as in the US.

For automated alerts (fraud or authentication-type things) see if it's possible to send to your email in addition or instead. That will sidestep the SMS messaging problem.

Personally -- I'm an iPhone user on Verizon in the US and have converted fully to using eSIMs when traveling abroad, where available. My thought process is that if there's some true emergency that requires me to be fully contactable, I'll be contacted in SOME way (email, Instagram, Facebook, Whatsapp, Twitter, etc.) and I can always switch my Verizon plan back on if necessary.

Andrew, that was a very nice way of telling someone they screwed up, ha ha!! Thanks!