2 thoughts on “National Rail will take contactless”

  1. If you make a journey with Oyster PAYG and en-route encounter an RPI, they can establish immediately that your Oyster card is in order for the journey with their handheld gadget. What is going to happen if you have used a contactless bank card and present this to an RPI? Are RPIs going to have a gadget which can query the central system in real time (which could sounds potentially slow/unreliable especially in tunnel sections on say the ELL) or will they just log the card number and check it offline later?

    • Hi Simon,

      My understanding is that the new handheld reader will store the card number and if you are later found not to be in the system at that time you will get a maximum fare applied. This is one area of the system which I’m not up to speed with because I’ve not encountered any RPIs while on the trial (or at least any who had the new reader). It is possible that repeated transgressions would result in a stiffer penalty.

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