Mastercard not widely accepted in Greece?
 

My mother arrived in Athens yesterday (her first international trip in 20+ years). I advised her to carry an MBNA mastercard, an ATM card, and gave her about 100€ cash that we brought back from Germany a few weeks ago. When I arrived at work, there was a message telling me she had arrived safely but that she was having ALL sorts of problems using the mastercard... she said that Greece had apparently adopted Visa for the Olympics and no one would take her mastercard.

I am feeling terrible right now... every guidebook I read said that both cards were accepted. She still has an ATM card of course, but she is with a tour group and they don't appear to be stopping at ATM machines often.

Has anyone else experienced this? I'm wondering if the merchants just prefer to take Visa and are refusing her Mastercard even though they could accept it.

In any case, I wanted to post this for anyone planning a trip to Greece as a heads up

ttt

Anyone?

Never heard such nonsense; if a shop takes VISA then they take MasterCard too. Unless of course she's goint to little shops which are cash only?

I was in Athens a year or so ago, and anything relatively substantial was put on a MasterCard.

Hmmm... thanks M-Kingdom

She is on a fairly expensive tour so I imagine she isn't going into tiny shops. I'm going to leave her a message at her hotel to be firm with the merchants.

I have been feeling bad all day because I never would have thought she would encounter any problems either... a Discover card or American Express, maybe. A Mastercard???

"Having ALL sorts of problems" sounds pretty strange to me, although I can say that m_kingdom is TOTALLY wrong. My partner carries Visa and I carry Master Card. We have had the Master Card refused several times by both restaurants and shops that then would take the VISA. Never the other way around. These were not all little out-of-the-way places, either. There are places that take VISA but will not take MASTER CARD. I just don't think it is all that common. This has happened to us in Greece as well as other European countries, including France and Italy -- not often, but once in a while.

OK..we can have a pissing contest about who is right OR we can decide on a strategy to ease the pain.

I assume you have told her to use that ATM card to get cash so in the places she cannot use the credit card she can still pay?????

Thanks for the info Patrick. I wish I had asked this question before I sent her off :-( I don't know exactly what problems since I haven't spoken with her in person - just listened to her voicemail.

A bit of background - she is a preschool teacher, my Dad is a CPA owning his own firm with a bank in his building... so you can probably guess how often she has used an ATM card or dealt with any sort of credit card issues over the past 30 years.

I left her a long message at her hotel instructing her to withdraw cash every time she comes across an ATM if she is running even the slightest bit low (any extra she'll pass on to us since we are headed to Italy for 2 weeks in mid-May).

I will definitely post exactly what types of problems she ran into when she gets back in a couple of weeks, also the types of places she was trying to use her MC.

Sorry if I was part of the "pissing contest" but I do like to defend a poster from being called a liar. I hate it when someone says something has happened, only to be told by someone else that it isn't possible or as in this case that it is "nonsense" because the same thing never happened to him. My statement was merely meant to say, "yes, I know it can happen and I've been there too".

Well dears, I carry several cards which allow for all possibilities, however, I've never come across a shop that takes Visa and not Mastercard and vice versa. Any shops with couture worth consuming will certainly take MasterCard.

Aggie, she should explain her situation to the tour director. This person will help her with ATMs. After all, they are tipped at the end of the tour.

I have been using the same MC tied to my brokerage account since 1991 in UK, France, Spain, Portugal, Italy, Belgium, Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Finland and Russia. It is a debit card so it was always used in ATM machines and occasionally at POP. Never a single problem.

Last year before going to the UK and France I got a debit card with a VISA logo from my friendly credit union because Patrick and others told me how wonderful it would be. The only trouble was at the first use at Heathrow in a Barclay ATM it got swallowed up. I checked later that day and Barclay told me a card would be confiscated by the ATM for one of three reasons: more than one attempt at entering the PIN, taking too long or the card was unreadable. They couldn't tell me which reason applied. It wasn't a big deal, though frustrating, because I just used my old standby.

Later in Paris, I attempted to use a MC CC in a restaurant where I'd used it before and was told it wouldn't work. Lo and behold, when I told them I'd used it there earlier in the week it did work after all.

A different restaurant wasn't able to get my VISA CC to work and he pointed out that it was missing some code. I paid in cash.

Strange things happen. That's why my wife and I travel with 3 credit cards and, we thought, 2 ATM cards. Oh, about $200 US dollars also.

There are shops and restaurants all over Greece that do not take Mastercard. The guidebook I used for my trip there warned against using Amex and we definitely found that to be true too. We were not buying couture the whole time - perhaps that's the problem! We even encountered places that took no credit cards at all.

The advice to have your mum ask the tour guide for help is great. I'm sure the guide has encountered this dilemma before. We just are very used to having everything be quite convenient that we forget it's not always so in some parts of the world.
I hope it doesn't ruin your mum's trip - Greece is a wonderful place.

One other item -- at least in France, MasterCard is called EuroCard -- but has the same logo with the red and yellow interlocked circles. Perhaps they are not recognizing a name? Some of our Greek friends on here would know. BTW, in France, Visa is also called "Carte Bleu". But same card.

Rick in Maryland

Hi everyone,
I promised an update on this. Unfortunately, my Mom broke her foot on her last day in Greece but she had a marvelous time before it and she managed with her ATM just fine.

When I asked her specific questions about where her MC was rejected and the merchant told her they only accepted Visa, it appears that it was in smaller restaurants and shops. They were not "cheap" places, but she said they were smaller. The large shops that the tour bus took her to did accept both cards.

Whenever I've come across money-access problems in odd places (Cuba comes to mind), I've always been able to get cash on my CC (Visa OR Mastercard) either at the hotel or at a bank. Not the cheapest method, granted, but always there for an emergency.