Paying for gas in France and Spain

paying at the pump - yes. Unattended pump - yes. Go inside to pay - no.

Contactless will help inside unless the limit is less than you bought.

I used a Chase Visa to buy gas throughout Normandy, Brittany and Île-de-France this summer. I was able to pay at the pump each time without having to go inside. I believe all the stations I went to had a contactless payment option, which did not require me to enter a PIN. If you are concerned about it, you could stick to bigger stations along the highways, which are more likely to have that technology. I was willing to pay more to use those stations since I had read it could be hard to find manned stations on many of the days or times we were in the car.

The underlying issue will be transaction acceptance criteria as established by your card issuing bank. Generally, cards with the widest acceptance are chip & PIN, where the PIN is used for transaction authorization, which is different from a PIN used for ATM withdrawals. Not many institutions issue these in the US, generally just a few credit unions and Charles Swab.

I have a Chase Sapphire card that is generally only accepted at manned points of sale. I have a Chase Bonvoy card, with no PIN, that has been accepted at unmanned pay-at-the-pump locations. There is no definitive way to determine if you will be able to buy gas until you try.

We bought gas several times in Sicily and a PIN was not needed. However, we got in a bind in Poland when a PIN was required for trains. I think I will see if I can get a PIN for any of my cards. We also should be receiving a new REI card which is going to be capitalone, so perhaps that could have a PIN.

We also typically have about 100 euro in cash while we travel. Will a gas station take cash if a cc doesn't work?

In the last year we have taken two trips Spain and France. We had a car on both trips. I used my Costco Visa for all my gas purchases without a hiccup. 95% contactless I never needed a PIN. All road tolls were "tap and go".

In the rural places I went to on my recent Spain trip, we paid inside, mostly contactless. Most of the pumps were older and didn’t have an outside payment option.

Having a PIN won't matter if it is not connected to the European systems, so a US Chip/PIN card may or may not work.

You can always use a Chip/Sig card when there is a person; we had to do this buying gas in France, but we haven't driven recently and things change.

We just made sure to gas up before the weekends and also were aware of highways where gas stations at rest stops were always manned.

Hello from Wisconsin,
It must just be us. We do spend our car travel days in truly rural areas. Finding a gas station has often been a problem in France and a bit of a problem in Spain. We have learned to keep an eye out for a SuperMarche, a big one on the outskirts of town, and we have been successful there.

Our most memorable was waiting in a cloud of parked cars for one of six pumps. Once your car was filled you funneled into a second cloud of cars waiting for a single pay booth for the six pumps, and the pump you left wouldn't dispense until payment had been made. Yikes, and we were in line as they drew a cord among the cars indicating how many they would still serve before they closed for the weekend.

Also, in France we have found that stations can close quite early in the evening and on Sundays. Once again, this is rural landscapes we have encountered this. Asking where the gasoline can be found is a good idea.

wayne iNWI

Last fall we were not able to use our credit card at unmanned places. Even if it was tap and pay. We do have a Charles Schwab atm card that worked by inserting and putting in our pin.

Thanks Wayner. I'm guessing most of the areas we will get gas would be in rural areas. . . .😂
Great idea Paqngo!

I called each of my credit and they all say its no PIN technology.

When I ran into a problem in Poland buying a train ticket without a PIN, a local gave us cash. Wonder if that works in France or Spain for gas. 😂

I think my take away is don't wait until we are down to the last drop and to be prepared for anything!

We never let to tank go below half way before filling up. In the rural areas of Spain, there are fewer service stations than any previous time I can remember. There were stations in most (not all) of the larger small towns and along the main interstate type roads, but very, very few between them. There are few in the villages.