Money abroad · 7 min read
Cash or card abroad: what to use and when to save money
The honest answer is that you want both. A card handles most of your spending cleanly, and a bit of cash saves you the moment a card reader is "broken" or a market stall only takes coins. The trick is knowing when each one quietly costs you more than it should, and carrying just enough cash that you never feel stuck.
When a card is the cheaper choice
For anything of decent size, a good card usually wins. Hotels, restaurants, train tickets, museum entry, a rental car deposit: paying by card gives you a real exchange rate, a record of what you spent, and no risk of walking around with a wad of notes. The catch is the fees hiding behind the tap, and they vary a lot from one card to the next.
Two fees matter most. The first is the foreign transaction fee, often around 1.5 to 3% of every purchase made in another currency. On a €2,000 trip that is €30 to €60 you never see itemised. The second is dynamic currency conversion, which we will come back to, because it is the one that catches almost everyone.
Before you leave, check what your everyday card actually charges abroad. Plenty of travel-focused cards and app-based accounts now charge no foreign transaction fee at all and use close to the mid-market rate. If yours does, use it for as much as you can and keep cash for the gaps.
When cash is the cheaper choice
Cash still wins in more places than you would expect. Small vendors often add a surcharge for card payments, or set a minimum spend of, say, €10 or €15, which pushes you to buy more than you wanted. Street food, local markets, tips, a short taxi ride, a public toilet, a bus fare in a small town: these are cash territory almost everywhere.
There is also a budgeting upside. Handing over physical notes makes spending feel real in a way that tapping a card never does. If you tend to overspend on holiday, drawing a set amount of cash for the week and spending from that pile is one of the oldest tricks going, and it works.
- Reach for cash: markets, street food, tips, small cafes, local buses and trains, taxis, entry fees at small attractions, anywhere with a card minimum or surcharge.
- Reach for card: hotels, sit-down restaurants, supermarkets, big attractions, car hire, and any large or trackable purchase you want a record of.
The ATM withdrawal strategy that saves the most
How you pull out cash matters more than most people realise. A few habits keep the cost down:
- Withdraw larger amounts, less often. Many ATMs and card providers charge a flat fee per withdrawal, sometimes €3 to €5 plus a percentage. Taking out €300 once beats taking out €50 six times.
- Use bank ATMs, not the standalone machines in airports, tourist strips and convenience stores. Those independent machines (you will see names like Euronet) tend to offer the worst rates and push conversion hard.
- Always decline the machine's conversion. When an ATM asks whether to charge in euros or the local currency, choose the local currency every time. Letting the machine "help" by converting is dynamic currency conversion, and it bakes in a markup that can be 5 to 12%.
- Say no to the "guaranteed rate." That screen offering to lock your rate is the same trap in friendlier words.
The single rule to remember: whether at an ATM or a card terminal in a shop, if you are ever asked to pay in your home currency instead of the local one, say local. Your own bank almost always gives a better rate than the merchant's terminal.
Tip
See what you really spent, in your own currency
PocketTrip logs each expense in the local currency and converts it back, so cash and card land in the same running total and your budget stays honest.
How much cash should you actually carry?
Enough to cover a day or two of small spending, plus a hidden reserve for emergencies. For most trips that means the equivalent of €50 to €100 in your pocket at any time, topped up as you go, with a spare €50 or a low-value note tucked somewhere separate from your wallet.
Do not exchange a big pile before you fly. Airport and high-street exchange desks give some of the worst rates you will find, and you end up carrying currency you may not spend. Land at your destination, withdraw from a bank ATM, and take out a sensible chunk rather than dribs and drabs. If you are heading somewhere very cash-based, bring a small starter amount so you can get from the airport into town without hunting for a machine.
Keeping cash and cards safe
Split your money. Do not keep every card and all your cash in one wallet. A common setup is one card and the day's cash in your wallet, a backup card and reserve cash in your bag or the hotel safe, and a note of your bank's emergency number saved offline. If a bag gets lost or a pocket gets picked, you are inconvenienced, not stranded.
- Tell your bank you are travelling, or check the app, so a foreign payment does not trigger a freeze.
- Carry at least two cards from different networks. Some places take Visa but not Mastercard, or the reverse.
- Keep phone payments set up as a third option. A phone tap works even when you have left the physical card in the safe.
Cash-first countries versus card-first countries
How much cash you need depends heavily on where you go, so check before you pack. These are rough guides, not guarantees, and cities are usually more card-friendly than rural areas everywhere.
- Very card-friendly: the Nordics (Sweden and Norway are nearly cashless), the Netherlands, the UK, and much of urban Western Europe. You can travel on card and phone alone and rarely feel it.
- Mixed: France, Spain, Italy, Portugal and most of Southern Europe. Cards work widely, but markets, small cafes and rural spots still expect cash.
- Cash-first: Germany and Austria lean cash more than visitors expect, and much of Southeast Asia, parts of Eastern Europe, Morocco, and rural areas most places run on notes and coins. Japan is a special case: modern and high-tech, yet plenty of restaurants and small shops are still cash-only.
When in doubt, arrive with a little local cash and a working card, then adjust once you get a feel for the place on day one.
Track it all in one place
The real problem with mixing cash and card is that spending scatters. Card charges show up days later in a currency you have to squint at, and cash just vanishes from your pocket with no record at all. By the time you get home, you genuinely cannot say where the money went. Logging every expense as it happens fixes that, whichever way you paid. For the currency side of things, our guide to budgeting across multiple currencies goes deeper, and if you want to trim costs on the road, start with how to save money while travelling.
This is exactly the loop PocketTrip is built for: log a payment in any currency, or scan the receipt and let on-device AI fill in the details, and every cash and card expense lands in one running total against your budget. Everything stays private on your device, synced through your own iCloud on iPhone and iPad and backed up to your own Google account on Android.
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Keep reading: How to save money while travelling without missing out →