Hi everyone! I’m travelling to Amsterdam with my partner in a few weeks and will be staying for 4 nights. I wanted to find out if we can just use our Monzo cards alone whilst we’re there.
If not, how much money would you recommend for us to carry in cash? 
You can use your card there absolutely fine and nobody here has any idea how much cash to recommend you take.
The one “weird thing” I found before when travelling through the Netherlands, is that Visa seems to be very rarely accepted.
You’re grand in that Monzo is Mastercard and very commonly accepted - but if you’re travelling with Visa as your primary card, you might not have the same joy.
Thank you! Also, in terms of train fairs - does anyone know if it’s cheaper to get daily return tickets or a weekly one?
I was ready some websites and it seems as though train staff aren’t always around unless it’s the bigger stations like Amsterdam Centraal
Ahh yes I was reading some older forum posts and saw some things about maestro being the main form of payment taken. Thanks for this!
Thank you!
I was planning to go to Amsterdam in 2020. Then 2021. Then 2022.
With this latest variant, I am now going to delay until 2023, if Eurostar once again extend the voucher expiry date, which they have said on Twitter they will be doing, allowing bookings up to June 2022, for travel up to 12 months in advance.
The Maestro thing had concerned me too, so good to see the updates regarding acceptance of Mastercard. Glad I have the travel card spread of Mastercard and Visa coverage, so I should be fine by then.
€5 is not too bad!
Yes, I’m planning on going into Amsterdam Centraal pretty much every day so I guess we’ll budget around €30-€40 for travel.
We are, one of the nearest stations is Bijlmer ArenA which is supposed to be close to Amsterdam Centraal
I think the Maestro thing is still a problem, no? At least it was a few months ago (ie many retailers accept Maestro and the Visa equivalent, but not Mastercard and Visa). A v weird NL-only problem.
It’s fine because you can just go to a cash machine, but still annoying.
Actually it’s not fine. There are numerous shops who ONLY accept Maestro - no cash, no other cards. Going to an ATM won’t work there. I do wonder what will happen when Maestro disappears in 2023. I suspect there will be a special “Dutch only” Debit MasterCard.
To revive the thread, I have some helpful information for others who may be travelling.
We arrived on Thursday and havent had any issues using Mastercard, we chose to stay outside the city centre to save some money so we stayed in Oostzaan, which is about 4.5mi away.
Weve been to local supermarkets, small bakeries in this part and have no issues with using cash or mastercard payments no question about whether we use debit or credit etc.
Also the same for the city centre no issues at all, I was concerned myself as I had read and heard from other there were issues due to Maestro etc but we havent ran into any issues yet.
Hopefully this can help others with their future plans 