In message
,
Mizter T writes

Well, I guess the point is that the card would thus be being used to
pay for something other than travel - AIUI it's the fact that the card
is only used as an electronic ticket to pay for travel that exempts it
from this regulation.

I'm not sure that's right. TfL certainly proposed to use Oyster as an
eCash card and got close to trialling such a system, but never went
ahead because of a lack of agreement about who would pay for processing,
allocating payments, in-store machines and the like.

AIUI, they still hope that Oyster will be used as an eCard at some time
in the future. But that hope may be overtaken by developments such as
the new Barclays "wave and pay" cards, that combine a debit card, Oyster
and eCash card on a single piece of plastic.
--
Paul Terry