London Banter - View Single Post - TfL acknowledges contactless technology risk

Kevin Ayton[_2_] · June 27th 14, 08:46 AM posted to uk.transport.london

On 26/06/2014 22:15, wrote:
On 26/06/2014 00:55, Paul Corfield wrote:
[snip]

Isn't that a bit of a waste of time and resources to work on introducing
ITSO, when eventually everybody will go over to contactless?

Not really - they serve different purposes.
The Contactless Payment Cards (aka cEMV), and the undelying "Transit
Model" that the banks and credit card companies have developed, have
limits on the value of an individual journey, and on the total amount
that can be accumlated before (a) payment is collected, and (b) online
validation (CHip'n'PIN) is required at a reader.
So while cEMV will work well for daily travel around a town or city, it
won't work for inter-urban travel where a ticket might cost £50+.

But then the same applies to any ePurse-based system. With something
like Oyster, a 'max fare' is deducted on entry, and a refund applied
when you tap out on exit. This max fare affects the minimum balance you
need on the card.
Now apply that to travel from Penzance to Wick. Would you want to have
that much credit on your card/account if all YOU wanted to do was
travel around London?

The issue is that there are many different travel patterns, and there
isn't a one size fits all smart ticketing product. We will need
different products on smartcard / mobile phones / whatever to allow
anybody to do whatever journey they wish.

Just my 0.02GBP

Kevin