On Tuesday, 8 August 2017 01:00:38 UTC+1, wrote:

It's the same as for Oyster but the flag would be placed on the Oyster
account instead of on the individual card. The railcard holder still has to
present the railcard to LUL for them to place the flag on (actually a card
number and expiry date rather than a simple flag as with Oyster cards). I
can see that might not be so simple if all that is available to staff is a
ticket machine but in these tablet-infested days they should have a way.The point of Contactless (and Oyster in the future) is that all the transactions take place in the back office, as you well know.

I know that is a theoretical possibility but take a step back as to how online accountd work. The card holder logs on and sets up the account themselves. If they wish to add bank card details to their account to give access to extra information facilities if they use their bank card for travel then that is their choice entirely. TfL hold the data but never enter it or change it.

How on earth does an LU employee verify a railcard and then enter the details to a customer account? This would require the customer to either access a LU computer or for a ticket machine to be reconfigured to access the customer account database. Alternatively the customer would have to disclose log on facilities and bank card numbers to a LU employee. That's against all good practice for secure online accounts and control of your bank details. The only other choice is to allow people to enter railcard details against their account without verification. This is just inviting fraud.

There may be some combination of controls and facilities that I am missing but it's not exactly straightforward. TfL are also keen to remove as many transactions from stations as possible so adding more of them is contrary to the general policy direction.

I suppose the new generation of app based railcards could be made to "talk" to the upcoming Oyster app to give some form of verification but that doesn't give a universal service option for all railcard holders whether they own a smartphone or not.

I'm not saying it isn't desirable just that I can immediately see fraud and control issues without verification of identity and entitlement at some point in the process. TfL may take the view that they can live with the fraud risk but given how tight finances are these days I can't quite see that happening. Having an open fraud opporunity also fails the TfL Internal Audit test and also an external political test.

--
Paul C
via Google