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ATMs, cash are out for travelers. What’s in?

Do you still rush to the currency exchange booth when you deplane in a foreign country? (Image: Jim Glab)

Do you still rush to the currency exchange booth when you deplane in a foreign country? (Image: Jim Glab)

There’s an interesting story this week in the Minneapolis Star Tribune about how  Minneapolis-St. Paul Airport is having trouble finding banks that want to provide ATMs for the travelers there.

It seems that U.S. Bank, which had provided most of the ATMs at MSP, didn’t want to renew a long-term contract because it was losing too much money on the devices.

And that got us thinking: Do frequent travelers really need to carry cash any more?

For years, companies have been urging employees to charge as many of their travel expenses as possible on corporate credit cards for ease of expense reporting and reimbursing.  (Otherwise, business travelers are always eager to rack up charges on their personal airline or hotel-affiliated credit cards to top off their mileage/points.) And now some companies are starting to integrate Bitcoin transactions into their plans and policies as well.

For smaller transactions, plenty of new payment options are now in use. Summoning an Uber ride? Payment (including tip) is handled entirely in the app. Got a new iPhone or Apple Watch? Apple Pay eliminates the need to carry credit cards with you, much less cash.  And Apple Pay has spawned a new generation of e-pay imitators.  The deployment of Bluetooth technology can make payment for all kinds of things, including local transportation systems, as easy as holding your wallet near a reader device.

About the only place it would be tough to leave a tip in local currency would be the hotel bellman…but I’m sure someone will figure out a way to do that with a smart phone one day soon.

A report on CNN last month noted that Europe is well ahead of the U.S. in transitioning to a cashless society. It said residents of the Scandinavian countries of Sweden, Denmark and Norway use cash for fewer than six percent of all payments, vs. 47 percent in the U.S.

What’s your story, readers? When you travel, what do you still pay for with cash? Do you have any worries or security concerns about traveling completely cashless with the help of new technologies?  Post comments below. 

NOTE: Be sure to click here to see all recent TravelSkills posts about: Upgrades on United + TripAdvsior punked + Hotel resort fees okayed + Pay to join loyalty programs? + More!


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Comments

  1. Agree with the article, that Europe is much ahead of the US, and agree with the commenters that it depends on where you are. Returning from a vacation in France, several years ago, I had way more Euros in my pocket than I wanted, because we used plastic for everything. However, on a vacation in Thailand and Cambodia 18 months ago, we found that only hotels, and restaurants that catered to tourists accepted credit cards. (well, also the big international stores in the malls of Bangkok). Everywhere else it was cash.

  2. In U.S.varies greatly by location. I used to live in New Orleans which remains HIGHLY cash oriented. I now live half time in Miami and half time in Brooklyn. Amazingly, I still need cash a LOT more often in NYC. In Florida I can go weeks without touching cash.

  3. I just arrived in London yesterday morning and was given a very rude welcome at Heathrow. I always get off the plane and go straight to the ATM’s for my money. Right this moment the British Pound is 1.53 according to Wall Street Journals money conversion guide.
    In past years in going to ATM’s at Heathrow they would give you a price about five cents off, but nothing to complain about. Yesterday, the ATM wanted an exchange rate of $1.75 if it gave me British poinds and $1.32 if I wanted American dollars. I past on the airport location and later in the day went to a barclays bank atm were they gave me $1.59. Point is, you can no longer trust these ATM machines in high volume locations like airports. You need to go to a regular bank location to exchange money. Yes a hassle, but again just goes to show that you can’t trust anything anymore, someone out there is looking to make an unfair profit off of being conveneit.

  4. As the late Warren Zevon advised… “send lawyers, guns and money” (i.e., cash).

  5. SIM and micro-SIM chips are used in mobile devices, including mobile hotspots, to identify the device (and its user) to cell networks. Credit and debit cards use EMV (short for Europay-Mastercard-Visa) chips.

    The two relevant categories of EMV chip cards are chip-and-signature and chip-and-PIN. Most merchants around the world want one or the other, while many unattended kiosks only accept chip-and-PIN. American banks and retailers have begun the process of issuing EMV chip cards (almost always chip-and-signature) and installing EMV chip terminals.

    Many merchants already have EMV chip terminals installed but have not yet turned on their chip readers… the largest merchant to have already turned on their chip readers is Walmart. If you use a chip card at Walmart, you will have to “dip” the side of the card bearing the chip into the chip slot at the bottom of the terminal and leave it there while the transaction is being authorized. If you try to swipe the card, the terminal will report an error and insist that the card be dipped instead. Since a chip card’s chip can’t be “skimmed”, this will prevent an unauthorized copy of a chip card from being used fraudulently at an EMV chip terminal.

  6. In the last decade we have been seeing cash returning. Dollars are liked and often earn discounts or provide bargaining leverage.

  8. I guess I could toss a poor Mumbai beggar child a VISA card to get them off my case. If you never ever ever leave the US the advice m-a-y be sound. Be smart, travel with cash and numerous credit cards and ATM cards and a wink and a smile.

  9. I found out that in many less-developed countries, US currency is still very much valued and in demand. Traveling from Prague to Poland to Ukraine, greenbacks in my wallet were getting more and more useful. $5 in Kiev worked better than a can of WD-40 🙂

    In US, I had situations at gas station when I used cash and was subsequently cheated out change, because cashier gave me change from $5 when I handed him a $20. How do you prove something like this? Similarly, at a large restaurant chain, I once got a change from $10 when I clearly gave the waiter a $20. Credit card solves all these problems.

  10. Bellman, housekeeping, valet, curbside check in… Some days I feel like an ATM!

  12. Gotta use cash still with most black cabs in London, and American credit cards are still less convenient than European ones because you have to sign a printed receipt–even with a chip-enabled card–instead of entering a PIN. So, no, cash isn’t disappearing completely.

  13. I was in Amsterdam a couple of months ago. I tried buying some food at a large supermarket with cash. They told me they only accept SIM-chipped credit/debit cards. I am see more of this as I move around Europe. That said there are still countries, like Germany, where cash is still the preferred payment method. So its hard to predict what will work where.

  15. I carry a fist full of U.S. and Local currency when I travel abroad. I do go to countries of question a good deal and when push comes to shove a wad of paper money makes things happen. It got me out of Venezuela along with a business companion. I have too many incidents abroad and in the good ole US of A. Not necessarily life threatening but I needed to move on.

  16. Unsure if US Bank got fleece by the City of St. Louis at Lambert or not. I do recall a shoe shine vendor got a shock when his contract was renew. A service that is constantly shrinking, shouldn’t be treated as a cash cow. Now US Bank setting up shop in the area #1 grocery chain has been a winner for the customers, the stores and the bank.

  17. I moved to Ecuador a couple years ago and, except for traveling to California a couple times a year, I use cash probably 95% of the time (my debit card is the other 5%). It’s one of the reasons I like living here.

  18. I stopped using cash years ago when I did at a starbucks I think at DFW, and they looked at me like I had two heads for making them count change while my boss got his coffee and paid with a card in about ten seconds…

  19. Well… if you read the article, you discover some interesting details. 70% of the ATMs at this airport are run by U.S. Bank, which pays the airport a staggering $636,000 a year plus half of all transaction fees. No wonder the bank is losing money. Good for them for walking away from a bad deal.

    Call me old-fashioned, but I tend to use cash a lot when traveling, especially when I am outside the United States. When you pay cash, the transaction is done and gone forever without any possibility of credit card fraud or unexpected charges popping up later on your credit card bill.

    But I think our society should go cashless. Bank robberies would drop to zero, anonymous drug dealing would become almost impossible, and muggings would only happen to steal jewelry or electronic devices. And best of all, I wouldn’t have to keep dumping my coins into a jar each night and hauling them to a Coinstar every month.

  20. MSP is having this problem because they forced their restaurants and bars into cashless transactions. Not only cashless, you have to order everything via their stupid iPads that are at every seat. No asking the bartender for another beer, you have to find it on the iPad, swipe your credit card and then wait. Because of this there is no need to hit an ATM while transiting there.

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