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Comment by tommoor | Hacker News Reader

Do you have an AMEX? It's accepted basically nowhere outside of the US, actually very annoying

Total nonsense. I was traveling for 3-4 months last year, and my AMEX was accepted almost everywhere in Spain, Portugal, Germany, etc.

In Germany being able to pay with a card is not a standard. And from that subgroup of places accepting cards, a big number of them will accept only Giro (German card standard). Visa/MC is far from being universally accepted and AMEX is even rarer.

That changes of course, but mostly in big cities' centers (Covid accelerated things in Berlin). I hope businesses catch up with the new wave of payment terminals like iZettle and SumUp - they support all these different cards without a problem

In the last six months, I have used my AmEx in Italy, Canada, and The Bahamas.

Where are you having trouble with AmEx?

India, Malaysia, France, Switzerland and Germany. Go to small towns in most of Europe and you'll find a significant number of vendors not accepting Amex.

I know it is not accepted in many smaller places. I was reading maybe too literally the nonsense assertion, "accepted basically nowhere outside of the US."

Back when you needed to swipe that magnetic stripe the Amex one was different and required a special reader that almost no one in europe had. Except maybe tourist traps.

Not sure how it works now if Amex has discovered chips and contactless. The payment processors probably still need a separate path for Amex and I haven't seen that logo in a lot of places that do display visa and mc. So maybe it's still only available in tourist traps.

My current AmEx has had chip and contactless for three years or more now. But I wouldn’t want anyone to have to update their priors.

UK experience (some years back) of a platinum card was that the few places who accepted it preferred Visa or Mastercard. Minimal utility, basically.

I gotta say MasterCard is pretty trash too. I was traveling in Japan and effectively unable to use my Apple Card anywhere because they only accepted VISA nearly everywhere.

Funny enough, loading money from my bank account into my Apple Cash which is VISA allowed me to use Apple Pay, avoid ATM fees, foreign transaction fees, and was just more pleasant than using my bank card.

I was also recently in Japan (about 3 months ago), I never took out my credit card. I paid with my Apple Card (Mastercard) via Apple Pay.

I was there around the same time. I don't remember a single convenience store accepting Mastercard. And anywhere outside Tokyo or a major city you were unlikely to even see the logo. Cash only was certainly more rare than it was a decade ago.

Where I'm from AMEX is basically used for free stuff and cancelled afterwards. And for curiosity like reservations for me and my fisherman's friends.

Anecdotally, I can use it in 75% of shops I frequent.

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