credit cards in France

Ed
No! Not lugging all that cash. We are heeding the advice of others on these message boards and opening a Charles Schwab account to avoid the high ATM and transaction fees from our bank (Wells Fargo). We are just trying to estimate how to fund the account. We need cash for most of the B&Bs we are staying in and we know that the village markets will mostly take just cash. Basically, we are trying to find a way around the fees associated with ATMs. Thanks for your help everyone! Happy travels :)

Grocery stores take cards, so will most shops and restaurants. Your concern is unclear, however. Charge what you want and get cash out of an ATM when your supply runs low. Surely you're not thinking of lugging cash from home?

hi, i was only in Paris last year and i had no problem with either. But i always asked if they took CC. some of them still do the paper signature thingy too. fwiw, i noticed almost everyone in Paris and in UK uses their CC/debit for everything including coffee. Since they dont have to sign anything all they do is to use the PIN. cash actually slows things down along with signing paper. afa getting cash from ATMs, i just looked for ones that had the same logo as my credit union. If you check your bank/CU they will have info on what system they are apart of. on my first days in a city, i would look for banks/ATMs that i could use while sightseeing. saves time to do it separately.

Scouting around seems like a waste of time. I make at least a hundred foreign ATM withdrawals in the course of a year and might have one or two flubs. In any major city it seems like there's at least one machine in every block, so it's no big deal. The only consistent problem I had was for a little while last year when Clydesdale didn't like whatever was on top of my stack, so rather than try something else and clobber the line, I just went across the street.

Elizabeth, If you go to a market say, Monoprix, to buy groceries, etc., and present your US magnetic stripe credit card for payment, the clerk will accept it. Be prepared they may ask to see your passport too. I've had that happen too. Sometimes it pays to carry your passport since the clerk knows it's a foreign credit card.

The last few times I shopped at Monoprix with my US debit card it was a nightmare. The first time they called a manager because they didn't know how to swipe the card, the second time they knew how to do it but my card froze up the computer and it took 3 minutes to figure it out. The third time the same thing happened. I imagine stores that are more geared for foreigners have less problems (Eg: Champs Élysées), but the store near where I was living (the Alésia metro stop)
it was a disaster! I learned to go to the ATM before doing my grocery shopping. When I lived in an even smaller town people had completely forgotten how to swipe these cards. I remember at a cinema I had to show the poor lady how to use it. Fortunately I was able to get a French bank account that year, but I have since closed it (when I moved back to the US) and have to get used to this again.

When we were in Paris and Amsterdam there was always a minimum that you needed to meet when buying groceries. It was usually 15 euros.

Dear Lo: Exactly right.

Okay. You made me curious. So I checked my CU statements from last year. We spent the month of June in France. It was our 3rd trip to Europe in the past 4 years. We followed our usual financial methods and this is how it went. We paid for almost everything in cash. We never used our debit/ATM cards to pay for anything. We used our CCs rarely. We typically withdrew cash in high amounts primarily to avoid having to do it so frequently, and we did it at banks (they're everywhere) 99.9% of the time. Our CU has a high daily limit, so that helps. Our CU charged us a grand total of $45.60 for those ATM foreign transaction fees. For a month. Compared to a total trip cost of $10,650. To us those fees are cheap and not worth worrying about.

Elizabeth, we have the Charles Schwab Visa/Debit card. It is different from your typical Visa or Debit/ATM card. Both the Visa feature as well as the Debit/ATM features are linked directly to your checking account. We paid a hotel bill of $1,200 in Barcelona using the card as a Visa card. We used it frequently in either the ATM machine or as a Visa card. Again, both features deduct cash from your checking or savings account. We've had the card for over two years and have never received a typical Visa statement. All of the transactions are shown on our monthly checking statement (including the Visa transactions). It works great for us. Schwab rebates the ATM transaction fees at the end of the month. For our visit to Spain and France, we put $5,000 into the account for our 3-week vacation and away we went.