contactless.



This is especially difficult as many (USA at least) tourists arriving in

London will have bought one of the latter at the airport (where they are

marketed aggressively) in order to get over the C&P thing where their

cards may not be compatible, and of course in order to have their money

in their pocket in Sterling.



Does the bank have some sort



of "special" overdraft for that or do they just refuse payment and the



vendor is out of pocket as can happen with credit cards?





On the other hand, TfL has gone out of its way in the past to say that

certain foreign issued and prepay cards won't be accepted. But it's not

clear if they mean "because they aren't contactless - duh!" or whether

they fail TfL's risk management tests due to the possibility of being

dry.



Now that CPC is fully rolled out, I expect we'll see more information

about both TfL's position on this issue and also war stories from

disappointed would-be travellers.



One possibility is that while they won't be able to get a balance from

the bank in the milliseconds it takes to touch in, maybe by at least

overnight they'll know to blacklist such a card's future use.

--

Roland Perry

There are two different types of contactless cards around:

i) just emulates the magnetic strip

ii) is connected to the EMV chip.

It's the first (mostly USA issued) which won't be accepted.