Londoners can bonk their way to work without Oyster cards TODAY Ticket machines on London buses are set to accept pay-by-tap credit and debit cards from today, it has been announced. The capital's Underground system is expected to follow suit sometime later, wirelessly siphoning cash from commuters and bypassing the Oyster card system. The system will use MasterCard's PayPass platform: but …
This has only been foisted on London, whose population I have nothing in common with and lack any sense of sympathy for.
Living in the North has its benefits, we still use real money, have poor Internet access and variable strength mobile phone signals. The fresh air is an added bonus as is conversation when shopping or travelling on a bus.
I will not be moving house for this.
"As a Londener , I thank god that you are where you are , and if you never visit my fair city ever, then thats just gravy, sent via my supar fast broadband HAHA :)"
Ah, the charm and wit of one of my fellow Londoners (demonstrates lack of education, too).
Chirpy Cockney Sparrow - my arse - sounds like the very person I'm happy not to meet when up north.
With all the stunning walks, and beaches here in South Wales, 'super fast broadband' is of low priority, especiailly when you blow your nose, the worst outcome is going to be a bit of sand.salt water, and not the soot you get after a day in London.
Incidently, I get 20Mbs d.l even in this 'hick' village ! :-P
As someone who was born in London and still has most of my relatives dahn sarf, I do like being able to go on a five minute walk and be in the middle of a load of green. The only disadvantage is that people up here think I "talk posh" and don't seem to know the difference between "born in London" and "born within sound of Bow bells", and people down there hear me speak and think I eat babies or store ferrets in my pants.
As for trying to use the Underground during rush hour, being charged increasingly extortionate rates according to which concentric circle you want to get off within, or being taxed for daring to cross an imaginary line on the ground while in a vehicle.. you can keep it.
My favourite terminology for Oyster et al is actually "doinking". You "doink" in, "doink" out, "doink your card on it".
Much more accurate, fun to say, can't be conveyed as rude nearly so easily ("Oh, I bonked her through the gate at King's Cross because she didn't have any money"), and much more satisfying.
Doink.
"Are those the weekly tickets and daysavers you have to queue on a weekly/daily basis to purchase?"
That would be the weekly tickets I buy direct from the driver at about 6am when there's no queues to speak of, yes. I suppose I could buy a season ticket direct from the bus company and avoid the 5-10 seconds of inconvenience. Either way, it works quite well and means that when the bus station/stop is busy, I can squeeze past the bonkers and cash-payers with a cursory wave of a pass, while they're reaching to place the card on the bonk-pad, waiting for it to register, then retrieving the card.
If I'm the only remaining Luddite who is absolutely and utterly opposed to this nonsense of transferring 'money' from me to various companies without my having to do anything?
We live in a society now where the majority of payments take place without the payees interaction - bonks, obviously, but look how many utilities charge by direct debit; insurance companies, mortgage payments, ridiculous roaming charges... loads of *variable* payments over which you have no immediate control.
If I'm paying for something, I want to know how much and I want to know when; that applies equally to the gas bill as a bus fare. Waving a card past a scanner may be easy but it lacks any sense of 'payment'; I'm not surprised people seem to be perpetually surprised about how little money they have...
But who has time to look?
It is a very minor skill to anticipate that you'll have about half a second to see this as you go through. But if I can manage this with my near-dyspraxia and poor eyesight, the vast majority of people should have no problem.
How can i keep track of my journey and get refunds?
Don't know for the Paypass, but certainly the Oyster online system enables you to see where and when you've been, how much you were charged, where and when you've loaded the card. It's almost spooky to see it show times to the minute for the start and end of your journey, the stations you travelled to. Particularly spooky if you're off on a jolly during work time, or going for an interview....
How can i keep track of my journey and get refunds?
I'd guess that the Paypass system will show a journey record for each payment along the lines of Oyster on line, like this, from my Oyster online account:
Monday, 10 December 2012 09:08 - 09:36 Marylebone [London Underground] to Monument £2.00
Other than the security concerns about wafting your credit card around in close proximity to the unwashed masses, I can't see why this won't actually work very well. On the underground though, will the pay by bonk fares be the same as Oyster prepay, or will they be the extortionate cash single fares?
Refunds will presumably work in the same way as Oyster as well.
I like it and I'm all for it. Before direct debit I'd habitually forget to pay things, because I'm shit. Now I haven't missed a payment on anything in years because the logistics are taken out of my distracted hands and automated. That's progress as far as I'm concerned. I work with somebody who refuses to use any of these systems, with the result that once a week he spends a good half hour in the bank paying bills, sorting stuff out - life's too short. In the same way, I don't see topping up my oyster card as a problem or annoyance because I'm perfectly happy to use their auto top up facility and have it recharge itself. You can only spend so much on one of these things per day, which is plenty of time for me to realise that I've lost it or it's been stolen and cancel it.
How the heck do I know which card - Oyster, MasterCard, Visa etc is the one that actually paid the journey? If I've got a bus pass on my Oyster, and the reader happens to see my MasterCard first and eats my money instead, what comeback do I have?
Do we now need to separate all our cards into individual sheaths?
Or carefully extract the card from the wallet before waving it at the reader, thus causing a massive traffic jam behind as cold, gloved fingers try to find the right card in the mass of plastic in any modern wallet or purse?
According to the tfl website, that's exactly what you'll have to do:
"If you keep your contactless payment card and Oyster card together (for instance in a wallet) and touch them on the yellow card reader together, the reader will normally reject them both. This is because we can't be sure which card you want to use. If you have more than one contactless card (Oyster card, payment card or building pass), please choose the card that you intend to pay with, and touch it on its own on the yellow card reader."
http://www.tfl.gov.uk/tickets/26416.aspx
Translated:
"If you weren't bothered about contactless payments and commute you'll already have an Oyster card and a contactless bank card. Now that this system has gone live you'll have to fumble around getting one of the cards out of your wallet and if you're going to do that then what's the advantage over a Travelcard?"
I had an Barclaycard One Plus, which was RFID credit card + oyster card.
When Barclaycard took over Egg credit cards, they sent me a new RFID card, which stopped the oyster card part of the One Plus card from working. Barclaycard swore blind that it wasn't having any effect and refused point blank to replace it.
So I no longer have any Barclaycards, nor will I ever again.
How about flexible tokens with numeric denominations printed on them, so they could be optically scanned. You could have numbers like 5, 10 and 20 printed on them, and use them in combination for other amounts. In fact, it is so flexible, you could probably use them to pay for all sorts of things. You could even have smaller, more manageable tokens for cheaper items. (Excuse me while I patent this.)
Well - you could always let the people on to the bus in one go and then collect the fares once they are inside - you could have an additional member of staff to do this while the bus is on its way thus delivering the passengers more quickly to their destinations - a customer service improvement that customers actually want.
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Not fast enough and too expensive to keep/transport the cash..
I don't know the specs for the Oyster readers on the bus, but the when specifying Oyster on the tube, TFL were looking for a device that could scan a card, authenticate it, check any tickets on it and and update the card by taking any appropriate money off it in less than .8 of a second.
After all, while asking someone to spend 30 or 40 seconds sticking cash in a machine doesn't sound a lot (it isn't), it adds up when you've got 10, 20, 30 or more people behind you waiting to do the same thing. Now, add in the delay caused when the machine inevitably fails to recognise one or more of the coins or notes, and the consequent delay when the person is left to hunt around in their pockets, wallet, bag or purse for a replacement.
Remember, whatever system they have chosen will eventually end up installed in the ticket gates in the major tube stations, where it will end up dealing with thousands of people an hour in each station.
Then there's the security aspect (money is nick-able, cards aren't as they are never handed to the driver or left in the machine).
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Are you charged the same as an Oyster journey?
Or is it equivalent to the (extortionate) cash fare?
I don't mind this. Pay bonking with cards is actually alright, so long as it's as fast as Oyster. But pay bonking on your phone, that's just daft. Having my bank account accessible through my phone as well as through the cards in my wallet? No thanks, that would double the potential theft/fraud targets.
The rival platforms of Visa PayWave and Mastercard PayPass is horribly predictable though. Come on, it's almost 2013, do companies still need to be bothering to build rival platforms? This technology has probably been around for at least 10 years, you'd think it would have outgrown the playground bullying.
"so long as it's as fast as Oyster."
I'm not familiar with the speed of Oyster. However if the bonk-payment and new RFID-enabled OAP passes are anything to go by, it's the slowest way of getting on a bus next to paying cash when the driver has hardly any change left.
Just give me a laminated bus ticket that the driver can check using Eyeball Mk 1. Much easier, and quicker, for everyone concerned.
"I'm not familiar with the speed of Oyster"
About 0.2-0.3 seconds on the tube for the card to be acknowledged and read. Just enough to be noticeable, and very marginally irritating if you're feeling intolerant, although an experienced user will judge their pace so as not to have to pause mid stride. It's probably faster than the circa half a second for the magnetic strip tickets.
How can I prove that it wasn't me who used the 7.15 to Peckham on the 12th December? Don't like the sound of this at all. Can't wait for the first cases to come to light.
Isn't this a backward step? We now have 3d Secure and its equivelants on the Web and pin numbers for machine based transactions. Surely contactless transactions make fraud more likely rather than less. It might only be a couple of quid per transaction but that'll soon add up over a month.
I'll stick with the Oyster card I think.
Part of the point of "pay by bonk" is that you are limited to what you can spend before you need to authenticate yourself.
So the fraud limitation is low, they will probably just pay you back on the first time you claim it wasn't you..but investigate further cases.
There seem to be a number of naive postings on here. Let's run through a scenario...
So I lose my card and it's used 30 times in a day (only a few pounds per transaction but as I said previously it adds up). At the end of the month I get my statement and see there's an issue. I appeal and start to track back. Now, is there a way to track from a specific CC transaction to an individual bus / train? If there is then fine, all I need to do is pay £10 per transaction to see the CCTV (ooh, that's starting to get expensive). I then need to try and identify the individual who used my card and / or prove that I wasn't anyone of the people on that vehicle and that I hadn't knowingly lent my card to any of them. Sounds like an expensive, time-consuming and ultimately fruitless experience.
...having to get my credit card out amidst the general furore around the ticket machines doesn't seem like a good idea. Generally speaking people are in a hurry to catch a train so the chances of them subsequently mislaying, of having it mislaid for them, the credit card seem somewhat high. If I lose my Oyster card it's 30 quid gone. If I lose my credit-card that's a whole different matter.
Also will they still offer the travel discounts that you get from using Oyster?
No - to confuse matters more, bonking will give you the Oyster pay-as-you-go fares, but without the daily cap (since they don't know who you are, they just see a bunch of independent transactions). So it's not really an Oyster replacement so much as a cash replacement.
Also, if your Oyster card is registered, you should only lose the few quid or so it costs to get a new one, rather than having to get your bank to stop your card, notify their fraud team, magic you some cash....!
I think this is aimed at tourists really.
Oyster is not really that inconvenient even in pay as you go mode since you can set it up to auto top-up if you register online - whenever the balance drops below a certain level you can set it up to automatically add more credit from your credit or debit card (and that includes Amex whose NFC payment mechanism isn't mentioned in this article and doesn't appear to be very widely supported)
Also if you lose your Oyster card and it was registered, they're good enough to refund you the deposit you paid on it and transfer the funds to a new card (although it's a bit of a pain to get the refund bit since it only credits when you also buy some other new credit, ie not an auto top-up credit or a season ticket; but the funds transfer is automatic), so the only loss is the difference in the deposit for a new card if it's gone up in price in the mean time, plus (potentially) whatever someone managed to spend on it before you reported it lost/stolen.
"I think this is aimed at tourists really."
Last trip to London, I had to get an oyster card.
A year or two ago I visited and all I had to shell out for was a few bits of cardboard that I could poke through the machines.
Yes, you get the deposit back on the card, but after a long queue at the last underground station you use. Which isn't a short queue especially when you want to make your onward connection.
And I had to buy a week's ticket instead of the 3 one day tickets I got last time.
But either of those two methods sound better than having to get a credit card that can be read outside my pocket.
No - to confuse matters more, bonking will give you the Oyster pay-as-you-go fares, but without the daily cap (since they don't know who you are, they just see a bunch of independent transactions).
They don't know who I am? Seems a bit last-century if they can't spot that I've used my ticket before on the same day using the same card, given that they're going to manage to get all my transaction and journey details onto one statement.
"...No - to confuse matters more, bonking will give you the Oyster pay-as-you-go fares, but without the daily cap (since they don't know who you are,..."
Yes, they can't tell who you are, they just manage to charge your bank account without that knowledge.... Honestly, the lack of critical thinking here is really getting lamentable.
"Yes, they can't tell who you are, they just manage to charge your bank account without that knowledge.... Honestly, the lack of critical thinking here is really getting lamentable."
You missed the point.
You would like the supermarkets to do away with club/nectar cards and track your spending habits based on the card you use to pay for your groceries?
I keep my Oyster card (and mainline rail ticket) in a separate holder, easy to get out for the barriers. If it's lost or stolen both can be replaced with a small amount of hassle.
My credit cards and debit cards live in my wallet, kept somewhere deliberately hard to get at because they are more valuable to me and more of a pain if lost or stolen. I do not want to be riffling through my wallet at every ticket gate (as I can only present one card). That feels less secure, and it will slow me (and those behind me) down.
Nor do I want to be waving my phone around at the barrier, for the same reasons.
So I think I'll just thank TfL for this and carry on as I am.
"My credit cards and debit cards live in my wallet"
TFL haven't thought this though. The idea of waving your ready-to-use credit card at the turnstile, or a £400 smartphone would appear to be a fabulous invitation for snatch thieves who are walking the other way. The victim may well struggle to turn round if there's people behind them, and the thief (choosing the moment) is already hot footing it down the road. Add to that the risk of dropping said phone under the trampling feet of other tube victims and it seems an idea that's too bad to be true.
I'm sure this initiative will benefit some users, but TfL have more pressing ways to spend their hard-earned. Oyster may have its critics but it does a pretty good job of handling a very complex task that has to cover pre-pay, daily caps and season tickets as well as giving users access to their journey history (which you can get emailed to you weekly as a csv).
Bonking with a bank card is by no means a replacement for Oyster and I can't see that it will be, unless they start tracking users by bank card so they can intelligently apply daily caps and some sort of clever retrospective season ticket pricing. If they get rid of Oyster, how will I get (and use) a monthly season ticket by bonking my Maestro (ahem)?
As it stands, the only benefit is for those few people still paying cash fares as they won't have to first queue up to get and load up an Oyster prepay card. TfL may eventually be able to stop handling coins and notes, but I think they'll struggle to ditch Oyster, especially if national rail operators start using compatible systems.
They can't stop taking cash, the public affairs committee that cover the underground said that would be an accessibility issue, they have to offer a method for people without a bank account/card to pay to use the system. Now how reaosnable that method is I'm guessing another matter
The four or five wires that form the induction aerial used to power up your bonk card can be exposed just below the surface of the card (try acetone to soften it). They are close to the left hand edge between the signature strip and the mag strip. If they were to be mysteriously severed, then that card would no longer interfere with any of the other cards in your wallet that you actually want to work remotely, like your access card.
Feel free to disable your card, but be aware: You do no own your card, it remains the property of the issuing bank or CC company. If you are found to have willfully destroyed the card or otherwise tampered with it, they are well within their rights to not issue you with another card and cancel the one that you've got.
"This is still possible with my Oyster if I always top up with cash"
Depends how anonymous you want to be. In terms of privacy of an innocent person of no interest to the police, you've got that with your cash paid Oyster. But if they wanted to trace you then it's easy to tie your Oyster transaction times to CCTV, so a matter of minutes to tie a face to your card, a matter of seconds to collect your journey history. Electronically that's still anonymous without face recognition and a national identity database, but if so minded I suspect they could correlate the card movements with (for example) mobile phone records and if you're on contract that links to all of your electronic identities via banking records. You could argue that you've got a PAYG sim that is only ever topped up in cash and you never have switched on in the car (easy to link to your registration plate via ACPO's NPR), but even for a cash paid SIM the network records would still probably identify your home and work locations easily enough, and then they know who you are, and where and when you've journeyed on TfL.
Rather than being anonymous, you're making snooping more difficult, and maybe that's sufficient.
I suppose it depends on who's tracking you and for what purpose.
On the one hand, your bank tracking your movements and sending you an email that next time you're on the (your most used) line, you can get an extra 5% in store at Debenhams might be of borderline utility.
On the other, TfL knowing that you take the Circle line every weekday at 4pm, letting you know that the station at the other end is closed and you should get off the stop before might be of more use.
And worst case, if there was an accident in a tunnel it might help the emergency services to know that you went through the barriers a little before and have yet to exit from another station
"And worst case, if there was an accident in a tunnel it might help the emergency services to know that you went through the barriers a little before and have yet to exit from another station"
In any serious emergency there's likely to be an evacuation with barriers opened for speed, so it won't be any use for listing the unaccounted-for.
Wouldn't it cost to take this service in house anyway? Say you use a company to run the scheme, isn't that just like outsourcing IT, if this was in house, it would cost more to manage and run.
Interesting to see Manchester are looking at Oyster equivalent and will but using bankcards as well.
http://menmedia.co.uk/manchestereveningnews/news/transport/public_transport/s/1589128_metrolink-passengers-will-be-first-to-use-new-oyster-card
I travel on public transport - buses - an awful lot on Cardiff, and the Cardiff Bus "contactless" payment system is laughable. No topping up with a credit or debit card at all, just cash; to make it worse there's a max cash topup value of £20 per transaction - unless you visit the office which always has queues out of the doors and closes at normal office hours, so you can't even go there when you leave work.
I'm not asking for much: I don't need weekly CSVs of my journeys or a 300-500ms transaction time, I just want to be able to add credit to the damn thing with my bank card on a webpage - I don't even care if it's not a phone-friendly site!
I'd take the Oyster card - or NFC/RFID-enabled debit card - over this piece of crap any day of the week. Automatically adding credit? Bleedin' luxury...
All this complaining about cards and "no I won't carry around another bit of plastic" or "bad idea" or whatever - it's a CHOICE! Now you have a choice of using a credit card, which for some people is great as they either don't have an Oyster or don't want to carry one round or find it easier to just use what they already have. No one has to switch! Choice is better!
I don't think you understand: What we have in a lot of commentators on The Reg (and IT in general) is a sort of modern version of a Luddite, they can deal with capacities getting bigger and speeds getting faster, but if there is actual change they go mental and try to work out every possible reason not to accept it. This would be fine, but most of the reasons are ill conceived from a point of ignorance of the new technology.
In Canada we have this new thing called a Mobile PayPass Tag by Bank of Montreal - it's a sticker with a
paypass chip in it. You're expected to slap it on your mobile phone. The ads tout the ability to "pay with your mobile phone"
It's embarassing.
Paying with a mobile phone is done by
1) nfc (on or off sim)
2) on screen barcodes
3) modulated encrypted hypersonic sound exchange
4) wifi/bluetooth
5) exchanging stolen phones for drug money
It's not done with a sticker!
About a year ago I noticed that my Oyster card did not work from within my wallet. It problem is that I had a new credit card that supported wireless payment. The tube system could not make use of that card but presumably it was coming to life and messing up the oyster transaction.
The annoying solution was to take the oyster out of my wallet every time I use it. Given that in the near future all credit cards will have wireless payment and most people carry more than one card this is going to be annoying.
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