Tolls in French highways

You can never be guaranteed that a French toll booth will take an American credit card, even when it has a chip. On my recent trip my CC worked at every toll booth, whereas on prior trips it worked nowhere. The safest lane if you are given the choice is one with an orange arrow pointing up. You can try your CC if you want, but if it doesn't work you can use cash (coins or bills).

We drove from one end of the country to the other a year and a half ago. The booths just south of Paris did not take any of our cards; those in the south worked fine with our cards. France privatized the toll booths and different companies run different areas; some are more efficient than others. We always travel with a small coin purse filled with one and two Euro pieces and a few other coins as well as small bills. Tolls can range from a Euro or two to around 20 Euro or so. Most booth arrays no longer have attendants and most gates are for those with automatic ezpass type things or use credit cards. You have to look for the ones that take money. We once got stranded in one that would take no cards and no money; we finally pushed the emergency button and an attendant came on who could speak quite good English and had us try all our cards again and then had us put the toll amount in a plain box like device (no money counter) at the gate and manually lifted the gate remotely for us. We didn't have the 19.20 due exactly so put a 20 in the box.

Dear friends, Thank you for your help! I will try to use my CCs but will follow your advice and get some coins and bills to avoid surprises.
You are terrific people, always ready to help giving prompt answers. Have a wonderful Sunday!

One other point that may be of help. When you're in France, you may find that it seems the place runs on coins. Clerks in stores often ask for exact, or near-exact, change. Machines may take coins but not bills. Anyway, it's easy to run out of coins after awhile.

You may wonder: where could I go to change this 5, 10, or 20 euro note into coins?

If you're from the U.S., you might wonder... a bank branch?

Nope. Few, if any, would do that.

Where you would need to go is to the Post Office (La Poste: look for the distinctive yellow sign). I was referred to one by a bank employee who looked at me as if I had a third hand growing from my forehead when I asked her to change a 10 note into a mix of 1- and 2-euro coins. That was on my second visit to France, and I was amazed when I went to the Post Office how helpful they were. Your experience may vary, but I wouldn't waste time with a bank. Most banking in France is done via ATMs and via direct payments arranged online. The folks in banks, in my experience, are there to handle banking problems for customers, arrange loans, set up accounts, and so forth. Not to, you know, handle actual icky money.

drove in Portugal, N. Spain and S. France last month and all over Provence last June (Oh, I miss it. ) We had no problem with our CC in S. France at all. A little problem in Spain with the need for a pin, but then gave them cash or our bank debit card (that does have a pin). It is in Portugal that has some crazy toll roads.

Hope you are not shocked at the price of the tolls. Never going to complain about here.

I don't see where in your other threads you were warned of the need for IDP or equiv when driving in France. Are you set with that?

Also, just law and enforced from the first of July - it is noted on all the autoroute signs not busy with something else, the national speed has been reduced throughout France for undivided single carriageways (roads with one lane each way and a line (or no line on very narrow ones) between oncoming traffic and your lane instead of a barrier or division. Despite what a GPS/SatNav may show as 90 kph it is now 80 kph maximum on those roads. Of course they go down again when posted 70 or 50 or you have a town boundary sign. Those other restrictions haven't changed.

We were there three years ago and ran into many issues with our credit cards, even with chips, but I don't know if anything's changed since then? We just learned to start stacking our extra coins/bills into our console so it was ready to go. And we could never predict when/how much we'd need, so we tried to have 30 euros ready just for tolls (and get more for the return trip if needed).

We were there three years ago and ran into many issues with our credit cards, even with chips, but I don't know if anything's changed since then?

I suspect that there have been some changes to toll roads and CC. Prior to our recent trip I pretty much gave up trying my American chip cards at tolls, because they never worked. Then this time it worked every time I tried (about 10 times), which made things a whole lot easier. And it was in multiple regions on Autoroutes run by different companies.

I agree with this strategy as posted above: The safest lane if you are given the choice is one with an orange arrow pointing up. You can try your CC if you want, but if it doesn't work you can use cash (coins or bills).

It is NOT fun to be in the wrong lane at an Autoroute's toll booth (such as, being in the credit card lane then your credit card doesn't work). Cars with very unhappy drivers back up behind your car. You may need to press the emergency button and speak to someone. You may need to reverse against traffic to move to a different toll lane. A few minutes seems like an hour!

Another suggestion: be sure not to bend the paper ticket that you receive from the machine when you get onto the autoroute. Once I accidentally bent mine and when I exited the autoroute the payment machine rejected my ticket. This was fairly near Paris on my way to CDG, and my efforts to explain the problem to a gendarme were unsuccessful. I finally reversed and successfully used another toll booth. My last experience driving on French autoroutes was 3 years ago, so I am assuming drivers still receive a paper ticket upon entering an autoroute.

I have fond memories on driving on French autoroutes 15-20 years ago, when people manned the toll booths. I loved the friendly "Bonjour" greeting before being informed of my toll.

Thanks for such valuable information. The little details such as the paper ticket, the importance of having enough change will be very useful. I obtained an international driving permit at the AAA office in Virginia. Thank you again for taking the time to help us!! 👍👍😊😊

My last trip I had good luck with my Capital One Venture card. It worked, first try, at all but one toll booth. That one I tried everything I had twice then paid cash. You don't have to have coins. The machine will definitely take a ten and I'm pretty sure a twenty is fine too. You get change back in coins.

I also had my Andrews FCU chip and pin card. I hadn't had any better luck with it in the past than with other cards. This time I was three for three using it at automated gas stations, that was a pleasant surprise.

I'm thinking the only time I had issues on this trip were related to internet interruptions at merchants. It happens occasionally so it's good to always have some cash on hand in case. I rarely carry more than 50 euro at a time.

I kept track of the cash machines this trip. I like LCL, they asked me if I wanted my money in "mostly tens and twenties". I usually get 60 euros at a time, so a twenty and four tens was perfect. I also liked the ATM's at Carrefour stores. They let me choose all tens. At Orly, there was a machine labeled ATM but didn't have any bank name (or exchange name) on it. It charged a two euro fee. I went ahead with it because I wanted to see if USAA's refund policy for ATM fees works when you're overseas. On the receipt, it showed the company was TravelEx. I guess you can tell if an ATM is an exchange machine by whether it charges a fee?