"Visa: It's Everywhere You Want To Be" Except France

Yep, that's Visa's ad slogan from a while back. Would that it were true. Instead, it's only in half the places we want to be. Each store is hit or miss. First of all, most of the places around here use a card reader that reads a chip in the card instead of the magnetic stripe. Then, even though theyare able to swipe the card, it doesn't work anyway.

So far, our Visas are not working at Loisir Francais (or something like that), Carrefour and the Sauramps bookstore. They are working at Intermarche grocery store, Go Sport, and Ikea.

Frankly, it's a bit annoying to have your credit card working at only a smattering of places that actually display the Visa logo at the register. It basically means that you better have enough cash on you to cover any purchases that would otherwise be done with the Visa.

So my note to Americans traveling to France with Visa in hand--count on it NOT working at most registers at the store!