On 10/10/2014 15:40, Mizter T wrote:

On 10/10/2014 15:10, Neil Williams wrote:

On 2014-10-10 13:22:40 +0000, Mizter T said:

Scenario 1: I don't have a bank account, because no-one will give me
one on account of my past misdemeanours. How do I travel around London?

A pre-paid debit card. I expect these will become more common. I
didn't say abolish it now, I said a 5-10 year horizon. Maybe by then
mobile phone tickets will have made an inroad?

The prepaid contactless card I have doesn't work on TfL - I imagine
because one could use it to run up a debt on it, given the lack of
online authorisation (this is even though in this case - Orange Cash -
they do verify who you are). FWIW, I got it out of curiosity, and for
other contactless transactions it appears that an online authorisation
is indeed done each time (hence it's not quite the 'wave and go'
experience the adverts make out!).

Perhaps this might all change, or a limited amount of fraud might be
accepted given that, for instance, bus ticket machines are much more
'online' now than they used to be (so misused cards could be blacklisted
sharpish).

Thinking about it, this is quite possibly what an Oyster Mark II system
would be, if it's account based rather than card based (i.e. the value
is not stored on the card but only on the central database).