On 2010-06-01 11:31:46 +0100, Peter Campbell Smith said:

Mizter T wrote in
:

I don't think there's any big deal or problem here at all,
was just interesting to note. As the story makes clear, the unused
credit doesn't expire and can be reclaimed by surrendering the card.

It may not be a problem, but accountants (and accounting standards)
nowadays require such things to be recorded as liabilities on corporate
accounts, which is (one reason) why most commercial vouchers and 'points'
have an expiry date.

Indeed, which is why prepaid phone credits always had tight expiry
dates, although commercial considerations have caused relaxation more
recently. The question about the accounting of Oystercard balances had
occurred to me, sitting on several cards with some fairly stale
balances on. I know that accounting rules can be very inflexible but
you would have thought that a statistical approach would be a sensible
way to account for any outstanding balance. It's not as if there's a
shortage of usage data.

Presumably the GBP 30m will continue to increase over the years, so I
wonder whose balance sheet shows the liability?

Peter