How much cash is needed in Paris and etiquette

June 16, 2024 4:27 PM

My daughter and I will be in Paris for 21 days; how much cash will I need for Paris? When is it preferred to use cash?

Most of the information I find online is from the Before Times or assumptions that it is for a daily overall budget. I assume that many businesses use Apple Wallet.

I have all my lodgings sorted and plan to get both the Museum Pass and Navigo card at the airport.

However, I am unsure about smaller transactions under 20 Euros and whether giving 5% tips on a card is rude. Are the open-air markets all cash? Does one get discount opportunities with cash?

posted by jadepearl to Travel & Transportation around Paris, France (17 answers total)

FYI you can create a virtual Navigo card directly in Apple Wallet; no need to buy a physical one.
posted by kickingtheground at 4:49 PM on June 16 [1 favorite]

Best answer: Some of the flea market vendors will probably take cash only. Restaurant tips in France are appreciated but not expected - if you do leave one then cash would also be good for that. Apart from that, it is possible to be staying in Paris for several days without using cash at all. My strategy when in any western Euro based country is perhaps to carry maybe 40-100 euros in notes, in case needed. There are many, well maintained ATMs - often located in bank lobbies.
posted by rongorongo at 11:22 PM on June 16 [1 favorite]

Best answer: I travel extensively in Europe, in population centers, and haven't bothered to get local currency in years. On the exceptionally rare occasion where it's all that's accepted there's an atm nearby. I bought ancient camera parts at a flea market this very weekend and the older gentleman who ran the tiny stall tool tap to pay, right on his phone. In short of you FEEL more comfortable taking cash I wouldn't carry more than 40-60 in smaller bills. But it's definitely not anything like a requirement.
posted by chasles at 12:10 AM on June 17 [1 favorite]

Best answer: Agreeing with the above that the general situation in major western European cities is that contactless payment acceptance is pretty-much ubiquitous, and your need for cash will be very low. When you do find cash useful, however, it will often be for very small amounts, and change may not always be available. I would suggest carrying €5 notes and €½-1-2 coins, in preference over larger-denomination notes.
posted by kickingtheground at 12:28 AM on June 17 [4 favorites]

Best answer: It's exceptionally rare to find a situation where you can only pay cash these days.

Agreed that cash for tips will be more appreciated than card; if you eat somewhere great and plan to go back again a cash tip the first time will generally set you up for at least a nice table the next time. On rare occasions a free aperitif / digestif.

You may be able to get a better price for cash on items at flea markets, but should be discreet about it. Start getting a card out and then casually ask "ou, le prix c'est mieux en espèces?".
posted by protorp at 12:40 AM on June 17 [1 favorite]

Best answer: And - it's not a faux-pas, but at food markets cash for purchases under €5 - €10 is definitely appreciated. It's best to use small denominations, there are very occasionally stallholders who have "accidentally" taking a €50 note and giving change for €40 back down to a fine art.
posted by protorp at 12:48 AM on June 17

Best answer: carrying €5 notes and €½-1-2 coins is good advice. one of your questions reminded me of French critical theory:
When is it preferred to use cash?
Pierre Bourdieu is a French theorist who studied (among other things) markets, including literal ‘open-air’ ones to which you refer in Paris, from a sociological perspective. This is from a London School of Economics paper:

“With Abdelmalek Sayad, Bourdieu studied peasant life and participation in the new cash economy that threatened and changed it. He studied the difficult situation of those who chose to work in the modern economy and found themselves transformed...” [pdf]

what might be seen as ironic is that, although he critiques a cash economy replacing barter in Algeria, now the late Bourdieu in Paris would likely recommend having some cash available (& point you towards a 600+ page study explaining why [wiki]), i.e. cash was the medium studied in Algeria, yet what was being problematized was novel financial systems, such as Apple Wallet.

Does one get discount opportunities with cash?
yes, many small shops i visit will not even accept e-payments for less than 10. for them, it's not worth the transaction costs charged by financial processing networks. the option of different forms of capital (again, Bourdieu guides) also means you don’t have to buy more than you need
posted by HearHere at 2:18 AM on June 17

Best answer: FYI you can create a virtual Navigo card directly in Apple Wallet; no need to buy a physical one.

You may prefer to have a physical Navigo card if you don’t want to be taking your phone out all the time. It’s very easy to get one at the airport (presuming you’re arriving at CDG) but remember that it probably won’t cover the journey into the city as you’ll be in a more distant fair zone. When I did it last year, I bought one-way tickets for me and my SO for the RER into the city at a ticket machine (which took seconds) and queued at the counter for the Navigo passes (I was third in line so that took a few minutes).
posted by macdara at 4:37 AM on June 17

Best answer: I found I didn’t need cash anywhere, but we didn’t go to open-air markets, etc. The one place it came in really handy was the Sewer Museum, where the card reader wasn’t working so it was cash-only and the security guy at the door was about to direct us to the nearest ATM but I had a €50 note in my wallet so it was grand. (NB: We live in a country that uses euros anyway so we didn’t need to do anything special.)
posted by macdara at 4:40 AM on June 17

Card transaction costs are now usually not passed on to the buyer. They often have a fixed fee so impact small purchases most. So for say €1-15 that’s a good reason small businesses with contactless machines do prefer cash when possible.
posted by lokta at 6:00 AM on June 17 [1 favorite]

I don't know where all the commenters above are from, but here in the EU there are almost no transaction costs for debit cards which is what everybody uses. It is also illegal, by EU law, for any business to charge you more because you are using a card.

Most payments are settled here directly from bank-to-bank (using their own app) without any intermediaries such as Apple, which was called out by the EU for trying to thwart other payment systems.

The whole thing is so seamless that I haven't used cash here in Europe (live in NL but travel often to France, Germany, Belgium and even Italy) for the last couple years at least. Generally, anyone who insists on cash is perceived as engaged in tax evasion or money laundering. All that said, carrying euro coins is nice to leave on the table after a meal.
posted by vacapinta at 6:37 AM on June 17 [2 favorites]

here in the EU there are almost no transaction costs for debit cards which is what everybody uses

Most Americans are not going to want to use debit cards abroad. Debit cards in the U.S. can have slightly fewer fraud protections than credit cards; more importantly, if your main checking account gets frozen on suspicion of fraud your life is going to get VERY annoying for a while, and quintuply so if you're away from home, whereas having one credit card frozen (or one weird charge for 5,000 Lithuanian light bulbs hanging there contested) is a relatively minor pain.
posted by praemunire at 8:35 AM on June 17 [2 favorites]

Card transaction costs are now usually not passed on to the buyer. They often have a fixed fee so impact small purchases most. So for say €1-15 that’s a good reason small businesses with contactless machines do prefer cash when possible.

For US purchases, yes. For Europe it is much more complicated, particularly as the EU has a hard cap on interchange fees that makes it much less expensive for merchants than the US. Also most US credit card issuers charge customers a fee for international transactions (or get their money from you via annual fees and exchange-rate spread) so you the customer are paying most of the added cost for using a credit card.
posted by photo guy at 9:29 AM on June 17 [1 favorite]

Best answer: I live in Switzerland and travel to multiple European countries in any given year. I wasn’t using a lot of cash any more before the pandemic and have stopped using it since. Many places are cashless now. Most self service checkouts are card only. Public transport just about anywhere has apps or virtual passes.
posted by koahiatamadl at 10:28 AM on June 17

Best answer: Most Americans are not going to want to use debit cards abroad.

OK, but the OP doesn't appear to be based in the USA.

Jadepearl, I'm travelling Europe from New Zealand. The only time I HAD to use cash was a semi formal airport transfer organised through a tour I was on. I'm using my debit card and Google Pay/Wise on my phone.
posted by Pink Frost at 2:50 AM on June 18 [1 favorite]

Best answer: As an American, I had no problem using credit cards in France when I visited last year (didn't try the flea markets).

Germany, on the other hand, still vigorously believes in cash in a number of businesses (even some supermarkets).
posted by ivan ivanych samovar at 7:42 PM on June 20

Response by poster: Thank you all. I am working with cash for the open markets. The vendors definitely wanted small denominations and coins were preferred. Everything else, so far has been card based. I am using credit card that has no international fees for everything else.

On the Navigo card front, it seems to work fine for Android but was hella wonky on my iphone. Basically, it rejected my general fare to get out of CDG but would recognise the all day zone 1-5 pass. My daughter could not get her iphone to load the Navigo card in Apple Wallet nor download the Paris Mobilities app. Her old school paper ticket for zones 1-3 worked fine. We are using the paper card while in Paris.

Just as a warning, when I went to go to the Navigo/ticket machines at CDG the line was LONG; crazy wait of 45 minutes long. My plane landed at 0700 so have no idea if that was just a quirk of the international terminal or people or people coming in for the Olympics. A thing to note is that Paris Transport is doubling fare prices and removing cost saving cards like the Decouvert (unlimited weekly) from purchase during the Olympics period starting July 20th.
posted by jadepearl at 10:15 AM on June 28