London Banter - View Single Post

Roland Perry · February 27th 11, 08:51 AM posted to uk.transport.london

In message , at 20:20:00
on Sat, 26 Feb 2011, remarked:
A very good question. I suspect they'll have a slogan like "Travel
on the tube with Mastercard, if everyone in your party has one; For
everything else, there's Oyster".

Children with credit/debit cards? Doesn't sound likely to me.

Whoosh! (They are the "everything else".)

So, the advantage for casual users of not needing to get Oyster for their
occasional visit to London because they can use paywave disappears if they
have children with them. Terrific!

I'm not sure how you could implement a "one-wave many-people" system.

It's marginally better than being stuck with a one-system proprietary
card (ie Oyster), but raises the stakes such that international road
warriors will need a pay-wave card in their armoury.

I wonder if a bank issuing an internationally-enabled pay-wave card will
be able to resist the temptation of adding a hefty "foreign transaction
charge" every time it's used. If you are stuck at the airport and need
to get to the hotel, it's likely to be cheaper than a taxi, but for
regular journeys the cost soon adds up.

--
Roland Perry