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I don't think I used my Discover once while in Europe. More people in the UK have heard of UnionPay and JCB than Discover sadly.
@NRB525 wrote:Capital One Quicksilver, if one does not want an AF.
Well, the PPMC gives 2% so that might be the best. She has a QS (and a CSR) for backup.
@longtimelurker wrote:
@NRB525 wrote:Capital One Quicksilver, if one does not want an AF.
Well, the PPMC gives 2% so that might be the best. She has a QS (and a CSR) for backup.
If she has a CSR, that seems like the best card, period... no?
Edit: nevermind, I forgot it's only 1% (1.5%, depending on your point of view) for everyday purchases.
@SBR249 wrote:I have never walked into a UK grocery store that didn't take credit card. Tesco, Sainsbury, M&S, Co-op all took CCs. Even Chip & Pin transactions though is pretty uncommon these days. Most of the time, it's contactless so maybe have you daughter test out whether she could use a foreign card on Apple Pay or something. Otherwise, ordering groceries to be delivered is also very common, when you can pay £1 to have someone bring all your groceries right to your door in a 2hr time slot, why wouldn't you? Might also be easier to use foreign cards that way. And if all else fails, manned cash registers almost always take foreign cards, even the ones you sign.
In any case, the whole rewards CC thing isn't very big there because the EU has effectively capped interchange fees at very low levels (think debit card levels). I have a 1% AmEx cashback card from the UK and that was about as good as it got, I think it's bumped up to 1.25% after the first £10,000 in annual spending. Problem was that there was a minimum yearly spend that you had to hit to get any cashback (£1000 I think? Maybe £2000) and so many places just didn't take AmEx.
But back on topic, it might be easier to just stick with a flat CB card like the Paypal MC for simplicity sake.
Right, this is the UK, and I am very familiar with the supermarkets there: Using Chip&Sig is a pain, but they will adapt!
The Amex card you mention still exists, but it's 3000 GBP before any cashback now!
It might have always been £3000, it's been a few years since I got the card and I haven't really used it since moving back stateside so the details are a bit fuzzy. But in terms of European CCs, it's just about the most generous there is without many strings attached and with the AmEx Global Transfer, probably about the easiest to get. Best of luck.
@longtimelurker wrote:
@NRB525 wrote:Capital One Quicksilver, if one does not want an AF.
Well, the PPMC gives 2% so that might be the best. She has a QS (and a CSR) for backup.
Then she has the available UK Groceries Trifecta
I also suggest the CSR, since having oodles of UR leads to more valuable redemptions.
The best grocery card I can think of is the PenFed Platinum Rewards card when the FTF has to be 0. This card gives 3 points at the supermarket but the value sadly is not 1 to $0.01. The value is 1 point is $0.0085 so the supermarket category is ~2.65% back.
@SBR249 wrote:I don't think I used my Discover once while in Europe. More people in the UK have heard of UnionPay and JCB than Discover sadly.
Have you had any luck running on the Diner's Club network?
@longtimelurker wrote:Asking for a daughter who might be living abroad for a while. Looking for a card with no FTF that gives rewards on foreign grocery stores and earns more than 2% (She has the paypal 2% card). I have the Penfed Plat Rewards which gives around 2.54%, just wondering what is better....
Besides all the previous suggestions, I’ll add the US Bank Altitude Reserve, but there are a few things to take into account.
If you don’t have any current relationship with US Bank, you need another product to qualify for it.
You need to be able to use mobile pay, and much better if you have Samsung Pay.
It has a $400 AF minus $325 travel credit, so a net $75 AF unless you can use or value some of the other benefits.
If you’re ok with that, it offers 3x on every mobile wallet transaction, which translates to 4.5x if redeemed for travel. Personally, I see it as a 4.5x card because I only redeem my points for travel.
This is probably my favorite card when I travel abroad because I don’t have to guess how the merchant is going to code. As long as I can use SP or even Apple Pay, I’m good. Just one warning: An issue I’ve run into with Apple Pay is that many countries have a low limit on contactless transactions, and for some reason, Apple Pay seems to be affected at many places if their terminals aren’t updated to differentiate a mobile pay transaction from a contactless transaction. Even when I tried SP as a contactless transaction, it wouldn’t go through until I discovered that if I placed my phone (Samsung) next to the swiper instead of the “tap” area, it’d work just fine. Basically, you get around mobile pay to use MST if you put the phone in the right place.
If you can deal with the caveats, I don’t think you can beat the 4.5x earnings with any other card. If I remember correctly from past threads, you use Samsung Pay, but I’m not sure about your DD.