Travelling soon - any advice if hostels accept cards in India or I have to give them cash
Travelling soon - any advice if hostels accept cards in India or I have to give them cash
Cash cash cash. Throughout Kerala and Karnataka - its just a preffered from of payment at hostels here - dont know whether it is to save tax for them or what. but only bigger hostels accepted card.
Better off with cash, unless you're fully paying online. good thing there's atms everywhere, except in small towns in Kerala where a lot of them are out of cash. but usually hostel owners are very nice and they give you some time to get cash and pay at checkout so you dont have to worry about having cash on hand at check out. at least i got lucky at a few places like that in Kerala. I spent some time at the Sivananda ashram and they did not take cards. they accepted bank transfers but only from indian bank accounts and from foreign bank accounts there was a high fee.
Some of the hostels i booked in advance i was able to pay part cash online but when i got to the hostel, they wanted cash. a lot of hostels are run by locals so they dont have the card swping machines etc. apple pay is not an option in india. saw some fellow Indian travellers pay via QR code of their UPI system but i investigated, as a foreign card holder, you can too but for foreigners, its like a wallet system (not direct debit from bank account) and there's like a 2% currency exchange fee to load cash up there. so i just landed up using a fee-free atm, getting cash and paying by cash.
Just got back from a 3 month trip to India. only the major hostel chains like zostel, hostelier types take cards, that too in some places they would want to charge me extra 1-2% to swipe the card, otherwise all the others preferred cash.