London Banter - View Single Post

Roland Perry · February 4th 16, 10:23 AM posted to uk.transport.london

In message , at 09:39:39 on Thu, 4 Feb
2016, d remarked:
Its easy for the revenue guys little handheld machine to check a valid
oyster card or not since the data is held on the card. But how do they deal with
contactless bank cards? The card itself will have no knowledge of the journey
and I doubt these devices have a wifi connection to TfL HQ to check if the
bank account has any money in it and whether the card has been touched in etc
so how does it work? Or not?

Simply by the T&C of using a contactless card on TfL allows them charge
the card later (without any further seeking of permission) if it emerges
that the fare wasn't paid.

As for "burner cards" (I've got two of them) that's just a cost of doing
business. Whether they'd chase an offender for one lost fare is
debateable, although they might well prosecute a sample repeat offender
and make sure it's in the newspaper "to encourage the others".
--
Roland Perry