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Money & payments"Just use your card" is decent advice in maybe two-thirds of the places we went, and actively wrong in the other third. Here's how cash and card actually split across 20 countries with very different payment norms, not a one-size-fits-all answer.
Published July 10, 2026 · Last updated
Most of Western and Central Europe, plus Japan and South Korea's major cities, ran almost entirely on card — hotels, restaurants, transit, even small shops routinely took tap-to-pay. In these places carrying more than a small amount of local cash mostly just meant carrying cash we didn't end up spending.
Smaller towns, local markets, and rural areas across Southeast Asia, Morocco, and the Balkans were a different story — plenty of the food stalls, local buses, and small guesthouses that made those legs of the trip worth doing simply didn't take cards at all. A day trip built around a market or a rural bus route without cash on hand meant either going hungry or backtracking to find an ATM, which happened exactly once before we adjusted the habit.
We withdrew a modest amount of local currency from an ATM within the first day or two of arriving in each country, sized to roughly a week of small cash purchases rather than the whole stay, and used a card with no foreign transaction fees for everything larger — lodging, bigger meals, transport booked in advance. Keeping a small separate cash reserve (a bit more than we expected to need, split between a bag and a wallet rather than all in one place) meant a lost or skimmed card never once left us stuck without any way to pay for anything that day.
Enough for about a week of small local purchases — markets, food stalls, local transit — rather than your whole stay. Withdraw more from an ATM as you go instead of carrying a large amount from day one.
Largely, yes — a number of travel-oriented debit and credit cards charge no foreign transaction fee, and using one of those for card purchases avoids the 1-3% fee that a standard domestic card typically adds to every international charge.
Carrying a large amount in one place is the actual risk, not carrying cash itself. Splitting it between a bag, a wallet, and a hotel safe rather than keeping it all in one spot means a single theft or loss doesn't wipe out your whole cash reserve at once.
