Oyster card top up

adonis10

Trying to top up online but it says that it will be available tomorrow. Surely if I top it up now it should be available instantly? What about topping up at the station, is that available instantly?

jon81uk

If you do it at the ticket machine it is instant, when you tap at the end of the transaction the balance is downloaded to your card. When buying online you need to nominate a station to have the balance downloaded to your card at, I think it needs overnight to send the information to the station and then you get the money once you tap in. As the balance is stored on the card you can't buy online and it just appear as the card needs to received the information.

adonis10

jon81uk wrote: »

If you do it at the ticket machine it is instant, when you tap at the end of the transaction the balance is downloaded to your card. When buying online you need to nominate a station to have the balance downloaded to your card at, I think it needs overnight to send the information to the station and then you get the money once you tap in. As the balance is stored on the card you can't buy online and it just appear as the card needs to received the information.

Crikey, 2017 and it can't be added instantly when done online. Bizarre.

That's fine, however, will just do it at the station.

Nick_C

I know this is OT by why do you want a PAYG oyster card anyway? Don't you have a contactless credit or debit card? And a CC could be giving you cashback or rewards.

adonis10

Nick_C wrote: »

I know this is OT by why do you want a PAYG oyster card anyway? Don't you have a contactless credit or debit card? And a CC could be giving you cashback or rewards.

I do, but I don't like using contactless as it doesn't reflect in my available for a day or two which is annoying. Besides, I pay everything on my amex or MasterCard for avios points, and will top up with this so still get the rewards.

jon81uk

adonis10 wrote: »

Crikey, 2017 and it can't be added instantly when done online. Bizarre.

That's fine, however, will just do it at the station.

Its coming, they will change the Oyster system so it works the same way as Contactless (adding up the journeys at the end of the day rather than every time you tap) in the next two years or so. This will also add the weekly cap that you get on Contactless. But there is also a push to get pay as you go users onto contactless anyway.

giraffe69

If you don't like using contactless why not use autotopup then you never have to worry about it again.