Cash or card across Europe

Germany is mainly card, but there are the odd pub, restaurant and kiosk that have reverted to cash post-covid. Austria is the same. 

Poland is mainly card, but some small shops particularly in rural areas prefer cash. Some public toilets require coins too. 

Germany was cash oriented, but not any more. Covid was the final piece in the puzzle. Before that, someone using a phone to pay was a novelty. Now it's pretty much the norm, and you could go as 100% contactless as you would in UK.

Shame that its taking forever for self pay checkouts to catch on.  Still in that phase where everyone is monitored closely and you have to scan your receipt to exit the self checkout area. Caught on so late that they went straight to card/contactless only checkouts.

Thanks for the replies so far. Anyone got any experience in the Baltic states? I can't remember the last time used cash in the UK!

Just how much cash do you want to carry around?

For me, phone with a backup physical card (that's different to the one on my phone) plus at most the equivalent to £50 for that country.

Travelled like this for +35 years, and also do the same in the UK.

I didn't take any cash on a Baltic cruise, just used cards and that was quite some years ago. We only tipped up in major/tourist cities though. 

For non-Euro countries, get yourself a Post Office card. Free from any Post Office.

It's a preloaded credit card, you control it via an app and can load in any amount of any currency so you pay in that currency and avoid transaction fees on your normal bank card. You can convert currency too so if you find yourself leaving one country with £20 worth of currency on it, you can just convert it to whatever the next country uses.

I've used it loads in Australia and various European countries.

I used my normal bank card for Euros, that has a Euro Wallet on there, again allowing you to pay in Euro and avoid transaction and conversion fees.

The only place I've had problems using cards/phone recently is the Netherlands.  Lots of places, including supermarkets, only take debit cards issued by Dutch banks.  

Our part of Black Forest Germany, especially pubs and village restaurants, check if they take cards. 

Yep Netherlands has a big problem with cards, especially in supermarkets for some reason and just because one Jumbo randomly accepted your card in Arnhem doesn't mean the next will in Zwolle!

Weird as they were the first place I ever saw debit cards rather than coins accepted on parking machines 25 years ago.

Personally in this brave new world of hacking and power outages I'd be taking a healthy wedge of cash with me anywhere. Just yesterday I decided to walk across the field to my local co-op rather than drive to get a couple of beers and a loaf of bread and found they weren't accepting cards only cash due to some hack and had to return empty handed...

Luckily, I won't be going through the Netherlands. My route is Estonia - Latvia - Lithuania - Poland - Czechia - Germany - Luxembourg - Belgium - France - UK. I'm trying to hit as many capitals as I can along the way.

Here's the route if anyone's interested or got a comment on how it could be improved:

https://www.plotaroute.com/map/2806931

I do have a currency card that I prefer to use rather than managing cash.

Yep,I’d def carry some hard cash in case of cyber-attack or the leccy going down, be a right pain cycling somewhere needing a nice coffee and cake refill to find they can’t take cards.

For non-Euro countries, get yourself a Post Office card. Free from any Post Office.

Nah, don't bother. Just get a Monzo account or similar and spend it just like it was Stirling at the unadjusted MasterCard rate. You can get a decent amount of cash out of ATM's too for cheap even with a free account. 

Coffe and cake refill is my absolute priority.

Nice route - perhaps follow the rhine from Mainz to Koblenz and the Moselle from Koblenz to Trier. It's essentially flat, quite scenic and on cycle paths the whole way.

Czech republic is hilly 🙂

I was in Berlin this time last year, and a lot of (smaller, less touristy) places were still cash only. And yeah, the Netherlands are weird with only accepting cards from local banks. 

Belgium can be just as daft as Netherlands for local cards, especially pay at pump petrol stations.  My Dutch debit card wouldn't work in a Belgian petrol station, and nor would any credit card. Had to use the cash machine thing where you deposit a €50 note (that I always keep in the car for that reason) and tell the payment machine which pump you're going to use.

The Dutch card thing isn't as bad as everyone makes out - as long as it's a debit card. Credit cards are absolutely not accepted in supermarkets, most probably due to the not-unreasonable belief that you shouldn't be getting in to debt for groceries. Anyway. I've been here in Europe for nearly a decade, and the cash/card pendulum is starting to swing back to cash. Covid brought the Germans into the late 20th century, just as everyone else realised going cashless could help enhance the surveillance state that made card payments so taboo in Germany for so long. Purely anecdotally, I've not had a bank transfer for anything I've sold on Marktplaats this year - it's all been cash.

That said, a debit card and 100€ in cash will probably see you right. Don't worry about Zlotys and Koruna, either. I've never had a problem paying in Euro rather than the local currency - you'll see a calculator and the day's exchange rate next to most tills if you bother to look.

Took a few Euros in change to France on our most recent holiday and didn't use any of it. Not even the kids. 

As above i'd not worry about local currency, i'd just have a small stash of Euros, paid in Poland fine in hotels and bars/ hotels with Euros. 

Used my Starling card in Venice and as soon as you used it ,it pinged up what you spent in £ and €

What about Slovenia and Croatia?

I'm off there later this month so trying to figure out how much Euro cash I'll need - the vast majority of spending will be on (Visa) credit cards.

Rental car already paid for and accommodation will mostly be paid via Booking.com

I'm not arsed about getting the absolute best FX rate but I do get pissed off paying extra fees to get cash out of local bank machines!

Took a few Euros in change to France on our most recent holiday and didn't use any of it. Not even the kids. 

If you were in Spain last week you’d have been happy to have them 🙂

Posted by: vlad_the_invader

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What about Slovenia and Croatia?

Not been there for years. Must rectify that. I'd have used card and cash. But then I'd have had a wallet full of Euros anyway.

Weird cash machines there, with the keypad layout the wrong way around (calculator vs telephone orientation), so you have to make your brain override your fingers' muscle memory.