Money in Europe

This is what I learned about using money while traveling to The Netherlands, Belgium, and the London Heathrow airport in May of 2016.

You need a credit card with a chip in it 

 

Sample Visa card with chip. The chip is that yellow square thing in the middle left of the card

While their card readers accept cards with a magnetic stripe, this pretty much never worked for us. This is the opposite of how it currently is in the US.
In the US you don't always see machines that accept chips, and magnetic stripes (swiping your card) is the norm, in Europe attempting to swipe your card gives you weird looks by the cashiers as they expect chip transactions.

Because of this, make sure you contact your bank to request a card with a chip at least 2 weeks before your trip.

Your AMEX, and sometimes Visa cards are useless

 

Sign at Albert Heijn convenience store, inside Schipol Airport

In the US, Visa is the main player. The second place might be for MasterCard or American Express.

In Europe this is different. "Maestro" is their big player, and it is accepted pretty much everywhere.
Visa is accepted at most places, but we did encountered some restaurants and shops that didn't like our Visa card.

American Express worked about 40% of the time. It works in some "American" companies (like Hertz, some McDonalds, Best Western..) but it really falls flat in most local businesses.

Have you ever heard of "Maestro" in the US?
"Ma-what??" Yeap, that's pretty much the same reaction we had when I handed my AMEX to pay for groceries.

Also, don't embarrass yourself trying to use Apple Pay anywhere. This is currently only supported in the US.

Call your bank before traveling

Call your bank, or credit card issuing company, before traveling and tell them you'll be going to certain countries in Europe for a certain period of time.

Your bank monitors every single credit card transaction you make, so you don't want them to block your card because of a new charge showed up from the other side of the world.
If your card gets blocked you may need a new card, and if your bank is a small credit union you may only be able to talk to somebody the next day (8 hour difference, remember?)

Carry cash, including coins

I'm in my mid-thirties, work as a software developer and live in Utah. All of this means I rarely (read: never) carry cash with me. Worse case scenario I get cash back at a store, right?

Well, since your American cards might not work at that one specific restaurant or shop you're going in Europe, and you won't find out about it until its the moment to pay, you should always have your back covered with cash in your pocket.

The same goes for coins.
We rented a car for a few days (bad idea) and in order to pay for parking we had to use coins, and only coins. Some places charged 4 euros per hour, so for a 2 hour parking we needed 8 euros in coin.
Also, some automated train ticket machines only accepted coins.

Other places that only accepted coins included automated train ticket machines, self-service laundry services, and random food and drink carts throughout the cities.

Get a card without a foreign transaction fee, if possible

Most credit cards charge between 1% to 3% foreign transaction fee to everything you buy. This might not sound like a lot, but it adds up pretty quick.

My Delta American Express card does not have a foreign transaction fee, but it was rarely ever accepted.
My Visa had a 1% transaction fee.

Call your bank to find out what you have, and what you could do about it.
There are literally hundreds of websites dedicated to "the best credit card" on earth, so I won't really expand on this.