MSE News: Contactless payments scheme launches on the London Underground

Former_MSE_Paloma

From today millions of people will be able to travel on the London Underground using contactless payment cards...

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Contactless payments scheme launches on the London Underground




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Pincher

Could all the Gadget shows start doing reviews of Faraday cage wallets to shield my Contact less credit cards.

Street urchins run by Fagin will be brushing up against me continuously with portable scanners.

I'll have to carry cash from now on.

zag2me

Such fantastic news, great to see London leading the world with this. I've used it on the bus and it was fantastic. Well done to all involved, the revolution has begun. Transport is definitely a killer app for this technology

zag2me

Pincher wrote: »

Could all the Gadget shows start doing reviews of Faraday cage wallets to shield my Contact less credit cards.

Street urchins run by Fagin will be brushing up against me continuously with portable scanners.

I'll have to carry cash from now on.

Sorry that's scaremongering in the extreme. If you look at the technology it requires a live connection to take a payment. You simply can't scan the chip and use it later, it doesn't work that way.

Pincher

zag2me wrote: »

Sorry that's scaremongering in the extreme. If you look at the technology it requires a live connection to take a payment. You simply can't scan the chip and use it later, it doesn't work that way.

If a moving bus without a fixed line broadband connection can take my money, anyone with a Hotdog stand can be a base station.

giraffe69

If a moving bus without a fixed line broadband connection can take my money, anyone with a Hotdog stand can be a base station.

You carry cash then and pay quite a lot more. Mind you don't get mugged though.

zerog

Pincher wrote: »

Could all the Gadget shows start doing reviews of Faraday cage wallets to shield my Contact less credit cards.

Street urchins run by Fagin will be brushing up against me continuously with portable scanners.

I'll have to carry cash from now on.

As no PIN is entered, you will not be liable for fradulent transactions.

I'm not sure of the exact situation but I believe TfL has somehow managed to get the card networks to bypass PIN requirements, even if the card wants it, which means they accept liability for any stolen cards used on their system.

However, your concern is valid as eventually all shops will get contactless readers and they can then enlist the local urchins to brush up against tourists in crowded hotspots, or queues where avoiding the urchin means leaving the queue

zerog

zag2me wrote: »

Sorry that's scaremongering in the extreme. If you look at the technology it requires a live connection to take a payment. You simply can't scan the chip and use it later, it doesn't work that way.

Classic newspeak.

giraffe69 wrote: »

You carry cash then and pay quite a lot more. Mind you don't get mugged though.

I believe London is the only city in the world where paying by cash is significantly more expensive and where cash is actually not accepted any more.

Despite the legal grey areas, I recently lent some tourist nightclubbers my contactless cards so they could take the night bus back to their AirBNB house.

They couldn't afford a taxi as they only had a £5 note and some coppers, and who in the world would expect a bus not to take cash?

Sadly, the bus driver was a typical jobsworth and didn't move for 15 minutes while they tried to convince him to take the fiver or let them travel for free - which eventually woke me up.

The other passengers, who either had a stiff upper lip or poor command of English, didn't do anything and so it was up to me to save the day.

Although I like cash, I like getting credit card points more and so in this country I generally only carry a few tenners with me. I therefore paid £2.88 on my credit cards and accepted the £5 note in return (I'm not a charity, although I do donate £100 at a time as I would rather not have my donation spent paying people to count coins). Who knows what would have happened if TfL decided to pay double for ticket inspectors to work at 3am.


Other ridiculous examples of *public* transport operators serving their own needs instead of the *public*'s are: Sydney's Opal card where it is NOT possible to check your balance or top up at a station, and woe betide you if you don't have a satellite phone and need to top up at Wirragulla (although travel was previously effectively free anyway)

Amsterdam - where since July of this year, for 4 tourists to take a train from the airport to the nearest metro station where one can buy a day pass requires an outlay of €110 (of which €30 are non-refundable), for a trip that only costs €2.40 - the alternative being to pay €1 for a disposable smartcard (I though the EU wanted to reduce electronics waste and can't see what was wrong with the old paper tickets)

In Hong Kong, the transport operator regularly publishes a table of fares which are cheaper by cash than by smartcard - because they don't accept 10 and 20 cent coins, cash fares are rounded to the nearest 50 cents but smartcard fares are exact.

macman

giraffe69 wrote: »

You carry cash then and pay quite a lot more. Mind you don't get mugged though.

London buses no longer offer cash fares.

jap200

Still doesn't allow you to pay for more then one person per card though, which is a problem we faced when attempting to travel by bus in London with children (who were over the age for free bus travel).

chattychappy

zerog wrote: »

I believe London is the only city in the world where paying by cash is significantly more expensive and where cash is actually not accepted any more.

[on buses]

Yep, welcome to TfL where we dictate to you how you'll pay.

Can you imagine what would happen if a private business (eg Starbucks) said that they would be going cashless and you had no choice except to pay by contactless?

Very tourist unfriendly. But TfL don't care. Plenty of other countries have buses that can handle cash. TfL said handling cash cost them millions. Says more about their efficiency - plenty of other cities manage to run buses which accept cash.

The great thing about contactless is that people are less likely to notice what stuff really costs them.