In message , at 12:31:25 on Fri, 3 Jan 2014,
Mizter T remarked:

However, they have either withdrawn the restriction on using foreign or
prepay cards (and many tourists will have foreign prepay cards) or
they've just stopped mentioning it.

How many (if any) prepaid cards have contactless enabled? I suspect
they won't have it, as contactless transactions are all about being
super-quick, 'touch and go', without time for online authorisation.
Enabling contactless would be a risk for the issuer - existing prepaid
cards have a zero floor limit (i.e. automatic online authorisation),
for example.

Yes, I know what the problem for the merchants is (very similar to the
old Electron/Solo issue), but a prepaid card is the sort of thing that
minors, tourists[1] and the uncreditworthy [all three of whom buy tube
tickets] are very likely to have.

You ignored my point, which is that prepaid cards probably won't have
the contactless facility anyway.

Until we do a market survey, we won't know.

If the answer is "no they don't" then a big bit of TfL's contactless
strategy goes up in smoke.

"If an Oyster card and a contactless bankcard are presented to a reader
on a bus together (for instance, in a wallet), the readers will normally
reject them both, as it can't be sure which card was intended to be used."

That's talking about (say) a wallet with both an Oyster card and a
contactless bank card in it - not the OnePulse card, which was
specifically designed so that the EMV contactless and Oyster MiFare
elements didn't interfere with each other.

How do they manage to make the two functions *in the same card* not
interfere, when the two functions *in adjacent cards" do?

Is there some sort of communication between the two halves, inside the
card, to decide "who is the boss" in various situations?

I've read nothing whatsoever about anyone having problems with a
OnePulse card in the past year that contactless bank card payments have
been available on the buses.

Nor have I, but I don't expect that OnePulse and bus users overlap very
much.

(though I'd also expect the product to be discontinued soon

That's a great shame as it reduces the plastic-card-bloat in my wallet.

Not if your contactless credit/debit card can be used in place of an
Oyster card it won't.

The OnePulse may well *be* my contactless credit card.

Also a slap in the face for early adopters.

Early adopters should be used to slaps in the face!

Just saying...

- when-ish does your card expire, if you don't mind me asking?).

Later this year.

I'd assume it won't be reissued as a OnePulse card. (I'd also guess
that getting the remaining credit off it won't be as easy as you'd
like... unless the Oyster part of the card just carries on working
after the credit card part expires?)

Dunno. Last time it was renewed it took a typical half-hour phone call
to the 'help' line to resolve transferring the credit. I didn't think to
try using the card as an "only an Oyster". But this time perhaps I will.

Doesn't solve the card-bloat issue though.
--
Roland Perry