Foreign cards on on Osyter/contactless readers.

I was going to put the following in the bus forum but this applies to all forms of travel within the TfL contactless area, so here seemed more appropriate.

Some foreigners were using the X26 bus today from East Croydon to Heathrow . Every card they tried didn't work, which was about three. They appeared to be from an asian country.

Assuming their cards were contactless, is there any reason why they wouldn't work? If it was contactless would it be the foreign bank restricting it or are some types of foreign bank cards restricted by the system TfL uses?

I don't think I've ever used my bank card aboard on public transport but I'm not a frequent traveller aboard.

The bus driver said they were holding people up and they should have been prepared. Of course whose to say they actually used a bus before or any kind of TfL reader. If they had travelled on a train, they might have used paper tickers for example.

I'm not sure what happen next as I went upstairs but they might have kindly been allowed to stay, as it wasn't much longer before we departed after this. They didn't look so young in years.

There's a Union Pay card that is very popular in China but doesn't have a great rate of acceptance here.

infobleep said:

I don't think I've ever used my bank card aboard on public transport but I'm not a frequent traveller aboard.

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I used my UK contactless cards on buses/trams in Vienna and Prague this summer without any difficulty, but the systems were not the same as London since in both cases I was effectively buying a ticket from an onboard ticket machine.

I think it's down to the bank.

We had our bank cards refused on buses in Lund which are cashless and had to buy local JoJo cards - most locals just use payment cards.

We got home to find letters from our bank telling us someone had tried to use our cards in Sweden. Particularly annoying as they'd worked fine to buy the JoJo cards.

infobleep said:

The bus driver said ... they should have been prepared

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That's not particularly helpful, especially somewhere like Heathrow where you are bound to find overseas visitors who don't know the finer points of our systems/what does or doesn't work, etc. I hope the visitors felt more welcome at their next interaction with Britain!

pdeaves said:

That's not particularly helpful, especially somewhere like Heathrow where you are bound to find overseas visitors who don't know the finer points of our systems/what does or doesn't work, etc. I hope the visitors felt more welcome at their next interaction with Britain!

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To be fair, this did happen in East Croydon. Though perhaps they'd come in via Gatwick and not had any contact with buses previously.

Deerfold said:

To be fair, this did happen in East Croydon. Though perhaps they'd come in via Gatwick and not had any contact with buses previously.

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Ah, TO Heathrow FROM Croydon, I got it the wrong way round. Still, I hope the point still stands.

Even UK cards can be hit and miss with contactless. For example Stagecoach South take my Mastercard but not Stagecoach Southwest for some reason.

The official guidance is here https://tfl.gov.uk/fares/how-to-pay...tless-and-mobile-pay-as-you-go#on-this-page-0

Amex will definitely work. For non-UK issued cards, most Visa and most Mastercard will. Any other card scheme definitely won't work.

To quote https://tfl.gov.uk/info-for/media/p...actless-payment-on-london-s-transport-network from two years ago

Customers from more than 100 countries have now used contactless payment cards and mobile devices to make journeys on the Capital's public transport network, with more than 20 new countries, including Estonia, Morocco and Peru, having been seen for the first time in the last year

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Would need a card that does not charge a transaction fee if i were to use contactless abroad!

route101 said:

Would need a card that does not charge a transaction fee if i were to use contactless abroad!

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I believe Monzo and Starling don't charge you for foreign transactions.

route101 said:

Would need a card that does not charge a transaction fee if i were to use contactless abroad!

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I believe Monzo and Starling don't charge you for foreign transactions.

route101 said:

Would need a card that does not charge a transaction fee if i were to use contactless abroad!

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Indeed. We had one. Shame it didn't work.

infobleep said:

The bus driver said they were holding people up and they should have been prepared. Of course whose to say they actually used a bus before or any kind of TfL reader. If they had travelled on a train, they might have used paper tickers for example.

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"Being prepared" is easier said than done.

A year or so back, my wife & I were planning a trip to London. We have Visa cards (both debit and credit types) issued by an Australian bank.

I knew the score with Oyster & contactless a bit better than the average overseas tourist, so asked my bank about use of our contactless cards in UK. "No worries", said the bank representative. "Now we know it'll be you making transactions over there, so long as the merchant accepts Visa, your cards will work just the same as in Australia".

Sure enough, on arrival in Britain we used our cards in supermarkets, pubs, petrol stations and even at the ticket office at York without any glitch.

Until we tried to board a TfL bus (by coincidence an X26, but for a local trip between Kingston & Carshalton). This was the first time both our debit and credit cards were rejected. We were holding people up too, and in our case the driver waved us aboard.

Ten minutes into the journey, a ticket inspector boarded the bus. We hadn't paid a fare, of course, but luckily the driver had already alerted the inspector. The inspector said we shouldn't have tried to board using our cards since "overseas cards are not accepted on the bus", but he would "let us off - just this once".

Several days later, having now bought Oyster cards, I experimented on another bus with our emergency back-up Mastercard - issued by a different Australian bank. This was accepted by the reader no problem, so untrue that overseas cards are not accepted on buses.

So it seems there's no easy way to know if TfL will accept a particular overseas Visa card without trying on arrival. I'd suggest asking your local bank may be unreliable, as they're unlikely to know the intricacies of transit touch-ins, except to advise their contactless card is / isn't generally usable in UK.

route101 said:

Would need a card that does not charge a transaction fee if i were to use contactless abroad!

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The Mastercard I eventually used did charge a currency conversion fee, but since TfL consolidate all fares into one single daily transaction to your bank, the dollar value of the fee was trivial compared to all the other excessive expenses incurred as a tourist visiting London!