Contactless payment and revenue protection

And hopefully it can't read anything else on the card

I used a powerful laboratory light and a lens to trace the aerial wire in mine, and then severed both ends of it near where it left the CHIP by using a spot-face cutter. Well, they (Barclays) refused to give me a card without PayWave in it even after I told them I had no need or plans to use contact-less and was concerned about the security of it, much as XF did I suspect. Their answer was if you don't need it, don't use it. Very helpful

I believe they remain the property of the bank. I've had no T&C variation notice for otherwise.

That could be a nightmare to find, particularly near the end of a route where lots of people have used their contactless card to pay for their journey.

The difference is that when you acquired that card, you presumably agreed to the same terms and conditions that you would have open acquiring a regular Oyster card

Elsewhere I've seen it reported that the contactless signal doesn't penetrate through a couple of layers of baking foil. Depending on how your wallet is designed, it may be possible to shield one part of it with foil and keep your oyster card in a different part.
Personally, I keep my oystercard in my railcard wallet, completely separate from my money and card wallet.

Contactless cards demand a Chip & PIN transaction after a number of contactless transactions for security reasons. Since Oyster readers cannot ask for a PIN, what happens? Is this security feature overridden? This would be alarming.

If not, when a PIN is needed, will the transaction fail? This would mean that the passenger will have to pay the full cash fare to travel on buses.

Sounds like a nightmare either way!

Yes. The transaction will fail if you need to enter a PIN

Can't add much to that ------totally agree.

Contactless payment is not just a 'credit' initiative, I do not have a credit card yet I have and use a contactless card. I find it quick and easy, just a shame the vast majority of retailers (that I have experienced) don't!

Earlier this year I managed to be debt free for the first time in my adult life, I paid off the last of my student loan - then signed my mortgage agreement about three hours later!

I have not said that using a debit card to pay a bus fare is a sign of society crumbling, that is your misinterpretation of my words.

I have not said it was better in the old days, that was your misinterpretation of my words.

I did say that cards are useful when used appropriately.

I don't pay cash fares because I don't use public transport and haven't for almost eight years now. Most of the years that I did I held a staff pass but for the seven years between holding a local authority bus pus and an LT/LU staff pass I did indeed pay fares on London's transport and always ensured that I had the correct change before boarding the bus or buying a train or tube ticket.

Nobody wrote cheques for bus fares, and believe it or not there was far less fraud in the days before cards were introduced. If you believe otherwise then you are living in cloud cuckoo land. People were on the whole simply more honest 40 years ago. The country still had the wartime spirit right through the 1950s austerity in the days when wrongdoers got hard labour or borstal and much longer gaol sentences which IMO would do no harm today, just as corporal punishment in schools during my schooldays did no harm.
In the 1960s we entered the world of the 'never never', hire purchase enabled the 'have nots' to have now for weekly or monthly payments for as long as they could afford them and if they managed to avoid defaulting for the length of the agreement they kept their 'purchases'. Hire Purchase was a bad system for the poor who were the chief users and who often defaulted but it was also bad news for the businesses trying to sell more goods when they had to try and recoup their losses by selling reclaimed goods and taking the bankrupt and impoverished to court for the difference.
Credit replaced hire purchase and was popular with the poor because immediately the goods were purchased they were owned once the consumer credit act came into force. Credit cards made credit transactions much easier for both banks and retailers but it also created the apparently tenable 'live now pay later' society which has grown exponentially ever since. Credit more than than anything else has led to laziness, the idea of having something without having to work and save for it. Just about everyone who isn't a Jones aspires to keep up with one whether they can really afford it or not. Credit has blighted the lives of so many though they simply cannot see that it actually makes them poorer than they would be without it, if they ever incur even one penny of interest.
Many school leavers in the past three decades entered the adult world with poor literacy and numeracy skills and have little or no idea how to use cards wisely, it is not in the banks' or retailers' interests to coach them either as that would hit profits. The biggest loser is the taxpayer who has to pick up the bill for rehabilitation of bankrupts, going bankrupt now being the easy way to avoid clearing up one's own financial mistakes without having to make full restitution. It was not always so,years ago going bankrupt was a serious business and it took years to repay one's creditors and regain a reputation if at all, today it can be done and dusted in three years, a short sentence just like the short and ineffective sentences given to today's criminals.
Society today is bad, people expect to be looked after and do not expect to be held to account for their actions, credit did not cause the attitude but it has certainly helped to foster it.

Personally I would like to see credit cut, too many people have credit limits that are unsustainable and too many people have high oustanding balances which they manage by paying only the minimum amount each month, it's good for the banks, they can't lose, there's more than enough profit to pay the shareholders and debt repayment agencies, it's not bad for the retailers as they make sales and get paid even if the customers are skint, it's good for the government as it generates tax revenues and it's good for manufacturer's as it keeps people in employment. It seems so good and win/win all round but it isn't because the vast majority of manufacturing has been exported to China, India, S.America and elsewhere, one of the biggest factors in the national debt.

LT/LU/TfL has taken advantage of the credit society over several decades to move away from cash handling and to encourage the use of pre-payment, other businesses have done the same, insurance is a good example with automatic annual renewal using both debit and credit cards, it has become the trend to spend money without handling it, the premise being that it make's people's lives easier but the advocates don't say that it has led to even bigger profits for themselves, a larger tax intake for the treasury and the devaluation in real terms in one's personal income as a result.


So next time you think you are saving 70p try and imagine what that 'saving' is costing you and what it will continue to cost you as you progress through life!

The issue of TfL charging your contactless bank card when you have prepaid for your journey on your Oyster card was featured on BBC Watchdog today. This double charging could lead to your bank account unwittingly going into the red.

Watchdog's advice is to either get shielded wallets or seperate your Oyster from your contactless bank card. Apparently TfL will be running a publicity campaign when the system is extended to the Underground.

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