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Comment by jajko | Hacker News Reader

Just don't travel to Europe, you will struggle with amex here. Almost unknown at any selling point and as per what others post for good reasons.

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Ironic, in that American Express (AMEX) traveler's cheques used to be (before credit cards were common) a nearly universal way for American tourists to carry cash when traveling anywhere in Europe, you could always exchange them for the local currency, and they would be replaced if lost/stolen.

Live in Germany, use Amex works at 60% of the time. Visa 80% of the time. Many businesses are cash only (less after Covid)

You use credit cards 140% of the time??

The dude LOVES credit. Sometimes he pays for something twice just to flex.

> don't travel to Europe, you will struggle with amex here

Depends on the country. Worked fine in Portugal, Italy, Norway and Britain. Less so in France and Germany—they have influential financial centres.

My experience in the EU with Amex:

Good coverage in London, UK but not as much as the US

only fancy restaurants in France/Spain

some small biz places in Venice, Italy but probably only because of the Venice Biennale was sponsored by Amex and their sales people did a push.

TL; DR If there is a large local banking lobby, Amex won’t work.

In the Uk and Ireland I have a >95% success rate with it. I was in Germany recently and had a 0% success rate.

Europe is a big place.

Are you trying to use it in tourist areas or not? It makes a big difference. My employer a few years ago was bought by a US company who switched the corporate cards from Visa to Amex, and after that, every business trip to Ireland from the US offices had someone needing to claim reimbursement for paying without the company approved card as the Amex got rejected at least once on each trip. We used to joke that it was an attempt to reduce the cost of expenses by annoying people with the paperwork when the Amex was inevitably declined.

In Ireland/UK nope, in Germany yes!

I keep a backup Visa card and actually 99% of the time Amex and some petty cash is still fine in my Western EU travels.

I live in Australia when I first signed up for a credit card through my bank they issued me with both a Mastercard and an American Express card linked to the same credit account. It seemed to me they really wanted to push Amex as they offered higher reward points etc for using it, the problem was almost nowhere accepted Amex whilst Mastercard "just worked" everywhere.

Eventually my bank cancelled the Amex card and they no longer offer American Express. I never really noticed because I hadn't used it for years at that point.

I've travel in Europe a bunch (CEE, Scandinavia, and UK) for work and pleasure and Amex has always worked for me. I can only think of a handful of times where I had to revert to my Visa instead.

not so in the UK, especially London. strong presence. they’re accepted even at local shops where they dropped their fees in order to encourage adoption.

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