Londoners can bonk their way to work without Oyster cards TODAY
Ticket machines on London buses are set to accept pay-by-tap credit and debit cards from today, it has been announced. The capital's Underground system is expected to follow suit sometime later, wirelessly siphoning cash from commuters and bypassing the Oyster card system. The system will use MasterCard's PayPass platform: but …
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What about non-repudiation?
How can I prove that it wasn't me who used the 7.15 to Peckham on the 12th December? Don't like the sound of this at all. Can't wait for the first cases to come to light.
Isn't this a backward step? We now have 3d Secure and its equivelants on the Web and pin numbers for machine based transactions. Surely contactless transactions make fraud more likely rather than less. It might only be a couple of quid per transaction but that'll soon add up over a month.
I'll stick with the Oyster card I think.
Re: What about non-repudiation?
"How can I prove that it wasn't me who used the 7.15 to Peckham on the 12th December?"
CCTV on the buses. FOI request.
Re: What about non-repudiation?
Part of the point of "pay by bonk" is that you are limited to what you can spend before you need to authenticate yourself.
So the fraud limitation is low, they will probably just pay you back on the first time you claim it wasn't you..but investigate further cases.
Re: What about non-repudiation?
Pretty sure only the Plod could get that CCTV
Re: What about non-repudiation?
Read the story of the car driver in Holloway causing the death of a cyclist, if the bus video was working properly they'd have it on film and need not go through the court polava to try convict him
Pretty sure only the Plod could get that CCTV
Nope. CCTV footage is covered under the Data Protection Act so for the relevant admin fee (£10 I think) you can request a copy and the CCTV operator has a legal obligation to supply it to you.
Re: What about non-repudiation?
There seem to be a number of naive postings on here. Let's run through a scenario...
So I lose my card and it's used 30 times in a day (only a few pounds per transaction but as I said previously it adds up). At the end of the month I get my statement and see there's an issue. I appeal and start to track back. Now, is there a way to track from a specific CC transaction to an individual bus / train? If there is then fine, all I need to do is pay £10 per transaction to see the CCTV (ooh, that's starting to get expensive). I then need to try and identify the individual who used my card and / or prove that I wasn't anyone of the people on that vehicle and that I hadn't knowingly lent my card to any of them. Sounds like an expensive, time-consuming and ultimately fruitless experience.
Re: What about non-repudiation?
£10 is a fairly cheap price to see the scrote who nicked your card and get him hauled before the beak.
Though granted, the police should be doing all of this anyway, minus the £10.
And while I'm on a rant...
...having to get my credit card out amidst the general furore around the ticket machines doesn't seem like a good idea. Generally speaking people are in a hurry to catch a train so the chances of them subsequently mislaying, of having it mislaid for them, the credit card seem somewhat high. If I lose my Oyster card it's 30 quid gone. If I lose my credit-card that's a whole different matter.
Also will they still offer the travel discounts that you get from using Oyster?
Re: And while I'm on a rant...
No - to confuse matters more, bonking will give you the Oyster pay-as-you-go fares, but without the daily cap (since they don't know who you are, they just see a bunch of independent transactions). So it's not really an Oyster replacement so much as a cash replacement.
Also, if your Oyster card is registered, you should only lose the few quid or so it costs to get a new one, rather than having to get your bank to stop your card, notify their fraud team, magic you some cash....!
Re: And while I'm on a rant...
I think this is aimed at tourists really.
Oyster is not really that inconvenient even in pay as you go mode since you can set it up to auto top-up if you register online - whenever the balance drops below a certain level you can set it up to automatically add more credit from your credit or debit card (and that includes Amex whose NFC payment mechanism isn't mentioned in this article and doesn't appear to be very widely supported)
Also if you lose your Oyster card and it was registered, they're good enough to refund you the deposit you paid on it and transfer the funds to a new card (although it's a bit of a pain to get the refund bit since it only credits when you also buy some other new credit, ie not an auto top-up credit or a season ticket; but the funds transfer is automatic), so the only loss is the difference in the deposit for a new card if it's gone up in price in the mean time, plus (potentially) whatever someone managed to spend on it before you reported it lost/stolen.
Re: And while I'm on a rant...
No - to confuse matters more, bonking will give you the Oyster pay-as-you-go fares, but without the daily cap (since they don't know who you are, they just see a bunch of independent transactions).
They don't know who I am? Seems a bit last-century if they can't spot that I've used my ticket before on the same day using the same card, given that they're going to manage to get all my transaction and journey details onto one statement.
Re: And while I'm on a rant...
"...No - to confuse matters more, bonking will give you the Oyster pay-as-you-go fares, but without the daily cap (since they don't know who you are,..."
Yes, they can't tell who you are, they just manage to charge your bank account without that knowledge.... Honestly, the lack of critical thinking here is really getting lamentable.
Re: And while I'm on a rant...
"I think this is aimed at tourists really."
Last trip to London, I had to get an oyster card.
A year or two ago I visited and all I had to shell out for was a few bits of cardboard that I could poke through the machines.
Yes, you get the deposit back on the card, but after a long queue at the last underground station you use. Which isn't a short queue especially when you want to make your onward connection.
And I had to buy a week's ticket instead of the 3 one day tickets I got last time.
But either of those two methods sound better than having to get a credit card that can be read outside my pocket.
Re: And while I'm on a rant...
"Yes, they can't tell who you are, they just manage to charge your bank account without that knowledge.... Honestly, the lack of critical thinking here is really getting lamentable."
You missed the point.
You would like the supermarkets to do away with club/nectar cards and track your spending habits based on the card you use to pay for your groceries?
Re: And while I'm on a rant...
@AC 12:53 - What makes you think they don't? The advantage to them of loyalty cards is it covers all cards and cash and gives them more granular information about who you are and your demographic, address, etc.
Erm
The TfL information doesn't mention Mastercard once. http://www.tfl.gov.uk/tickets/26416.aspx
It says any contactless card carrying the symbol shown at the top of that page. Visa Paywave cards carry the symbol.
Re: oyster is shit
They all have a mysterious superpower - the ability to detect the absence of apostrophes and capitals in speech. It irritates them. Please stop.
Re: oyster is shit
Anyone good at any form of IT will remove the variables to track down the problem. Unfortunately we are forced to conclude that it's a case of PIBNIS (Problem In Buyer, Not In Seller).
Re: oyster is shit
I buy an annual travelcard. These are now only available on Oyster (at least on my line). Even though I frequently travel outside the area where my travelcard is valid, I rarely have to deal with any kind of ticket seller, oyster or not.
So, Oyster isn't shit. Maybe you could try actually keeping an oyster card, then you can top it up online or at a ticket machine and you won't have to deal with the sellers either.
Not for me
I keep my Oyster card (and mainline rail ticket) in a separate holder, easy to get out for the barriers. If it's lost or stolen both can be replaced with a small amount of hassle.
My credit cards and debit cards live in my wallet, kept somewhere deliberately hard to get at because they are more valuable to me and more of a pain if lost or stolen. I do not want to be riffling through my wallet at every ticket gate (as I can only present one card). That feels less secure, and it will slow me (and those behind me) down.
Nor do I want to be waving my phone around at the barrier, for the same reasons.
So I think I'll just thank TfL for this and carry on as I am.
Re: Not for me
"My credit cards and debit cards live in my wallet"
TFL haven't thought this though. The idea of waving your ready-to-use credit card at the turnstile, or a £400 smartphone would appear to be a fabulous invitation for snatch thieves who are walking the other way. The victim may well struggle to turn round if there's people behind them, and the thief (choosing the moment) is already hot footing it down the road. Add to that the risk of dropping said phone under the trampling feet of other tube victims and it seems an idea that's too bad to be true.
To replace Oyster? Really?
I'm sure this initiative will benefit some users, but TfL have more pressing ways to spend their hard-earned. Oyster may have its critics but it does a pretty good job of handling a very complex task that has to cover pre-pay, daily caps and season tickets as well as giving users access to their journey history (which you can get emailed to you weekly as a csv).
Bonking with a bank card is by no means a replacement for Oyster and I can't see that it will be, unless they start tracking users by bank card so they can intelligently apply daily caps and some sort of clever retrospective season ticket pricing. If they get rid of Oyster, how will I get (and use) a monthly season ticket by bonking my Maestro (ahem)?
As it stands, the only benefit is for those few people still paying cash fares as they won't have to first queue up to get and load up an Oyster prepay card. TfL may eventually be able to stop handling coins and notes, but I think they'll struggle to ditch Oyster, especially if national rail operators start using compatible systems.
Re: To replace Oyster? Really?
They can't stop taking cash, the public affairs committee that cover the underground said that would be an accessibility issue, they have to offer a method for people without a bank account/card to pay to use the system. Now how reaosnable that method is I'm guessing another matter
I hope they've notified the British Transport Police that thousands of gormless commuters will be waving their wallets and debit cards around in the crowded areas around ticket gates.
The four or five wires that form the induction aerial used to power up your bonk card can be exposed just below the surface of the card (try acetone to soften it). They are close to the left hand edge between the signature strip and the mag strip. If they were to be mysteriously severed, then that card would no longer interfere with any of the other cards in your wallet that you actually want to work remotely, like your access card.
Caution!
Feel free to disable your card, but be aware: You do no own your card, it remains the property of the issuing bank or CC company. If you are found to have willfully destroyed the card or otherwise tampered with it, they are well within their rights to not issue you with another card and cancel the one that you've got.
Re: Caution!
Perhaps. However if the only "tampering" you've done is to remove an antenna so your card can't be scanned straight out of your pocket, and if you're at least a little bit skilled in the art of public relations.. that could look very bad for them.
I want to remain anonymous when I travel
This is still possible with my Oyster if I always top up with cash.
I really do not want to start using my bank card for every trip I make, meaning someone somewhere would know my exact movements.
Re: I want to remain anonymous when I travel
"This is still possible with my Oyster if I always top up with cash"
Depends how anonymous you want to be. In terms of privacy of an innocent person of no interest to the police, you've got that with your cash paid Oyster. But if they wanted to trace you then it's easy to tie your Oyster transaction times to CCTV, so a matter of minutes to tie a face to your card, a matter of seconds to collect your journey history. Electronically that's still anonymous without face recognition and a national identity database, but if so minded I suspect they could correlate the card movements with (for example) mobile phone records and if you're on contract that links to all of your electronic identities via banking records. You could argue that you've got a PAYG sim that is only ever topped up in cash and you never have switched on in the car (easy to link to your registration plate via ACPO's NPR), but even for a cash paid SIM the network records would still probably identify your home and work locations easily enough, and then they know who you are, and where and when you've journeyed on TfL.
Rather than being anonymous, you're making snooping more difficult, and maybe that's sufficient.
Re: I want to remain anonymous when I travel
I suppose it depends on who's tracking you and for what purpose.
On the one hand, your bank tracking your movements and sending you an email that next time you're on the (your most used) line, you can get an extra 5% in store at Debenhams might be of borderline utility.
On the other, TfL knowing that you take the Circle line every weekday at 4pm, letting you know that the station at the other end is closed and you should get off the stop before might be of more use.
And worst case, if there was an accident in a tunnel it might help the emergency services to know that you went through the barriers a little before and have yet to exit from another station
Re: I want to remain anonymous when I travel
Do you think that they can't trace your paper tickets?
Re: I want to remain anonymous when I travel
"And worst case, if there was an accident in a tunnel it might help the emergency services to know that you went through the barriers a little before and have yet to exit from another station"
In any serious emergency there's likely to be an evacuation with barriers opened for speed, so it won't be any use for listing the unaccounted-for.
Re: I want to remain anonymous when I travel
You had better leave your mobile phone at home then
Re: I want to remain anonymous when I travel
"Do you think that they can't trace your paper tickets?"
Whoever "they" are, no. They can't.
No daily caps... No weekly passes...
how is this better than Oyster?
"but Transport For London also has to hand over a proportion of every top-up to the companies running the scheme and would prefer to keep the dosh in-house."
Em, I seem to remember credit card companies charge processing fees themselves.
And
Wouldn't it cost to take this service in house anyway? Say you use a company to run the scheme, isn't that just like outsourcing IT, if this was in house, it would cost more to manage and run.
Interesting to see Manchester are looking at Oyster equivalent and will but using bankcards as well.
http://menmedia.co.uk/manchestereveningnews/news/transport/public_transport/s/1589128_metrolink-passengers-will-be-first-to-use-new-oyster-card
"the vast majority of bank cards issued in the UK support pay-by-tap"
REALLY?
I thought it must have the "symbol" on it to indicate that it has NFC chip in it?
My D card doesn't!
Some banks are a bit late to the party! I had it with my old bank a couple of years ago, then moved bank and no more! Also, some credit card companies seem to be a bit behind the times.
I wish I had a bloody oyster card...
I travel on public transport - buses - an awful lot on Cardiff, and the Cardiff Bus "contactless" payment system is laughable. No topping up with a credit or debit card at all, just cash; to make it worse there's a max cash topup value of £20 per transaction - unless you visit the office which always has queues out of the doors and closes at normal office hours, so you can't even go there when you leave work.
I'm not asking for much: I don't need weekly CSVs of my journeys or a 300-500ms transaction time, I just want to be able to add credit to the damn thing with my bank card on a webpage - I don't even care if it's not a phone-friendly site!
I'd take the Oyster card - or NFC/RFID-enabled debit card - over this piece of crap any day of the week. Automatically adding credit? Bleedin' luxury...
Re: I wish I had a bloody oyster card...
Spelling fail: of course, "on Cardiff" should be "in Cardiff".... Why can't I edit my post like every other comment/forum software, Reg!
You lot are nuts
All this complaining about cards and "no I won't carry around another bit of plastic" or "bad idea" or whatever - it's a CHOICE! Now you have a choice of using a credit card, which for some people is great as they either don't have an Oyster or don't want to carry one round or find it easier to just use what they already have. No one has to switch! Choice is better!
Re: You lot are nuts
I don't think you understand: What we have in a lot of commentators on The Reg (and IT in general) is a sort of modern version of a Luddite, they can deal with capacities getting bigger and speeds getting faster, but if there is actual change they go mental and try to work out every possible reason not to accept it. This would be fine, but most of the reasons are ill conceived from a point of ignorance of the new technology.
Mobile Paypass tags
In Canada we have this new thing called a Mobile PayPass Tag by Bank of Montreal - it's a sticker with a
paypass chip in it. You're expected to slap it on your mobile phone. The ads tout the ability to "pay with your mobile phone"
It's embarassing.
Paying with a mobile phone is done by
1) nfc (on or off sim)
2) on screen barcodes
3) modulated encrypted hypersonic sound exchange
4) wifi/bluetooth
5) exchanging stolen phones for drug money
It's not done with a sticker!
USA Reference...
Go to your local record library and listen to MTA by the Kingston Trio.
"This could happen to you!"
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