Card declined, bank technical issue.

I’ve posted this saga on the Railforums but I’ll recap it here and see if anyone can shed anymore light on it.

Thursday July 23:

Received notification from banking app that Wednesdays TFL payment had failed due to a technical issue. Received TFL email saying card had declined and was blocked for travel. Went into my TFL account, saw button marked “request card approval”. Clicked it, £5.25 appeared on my bank account as pending.

Immediately received TFL email saying card was now approved. Forty five minutes later, tapped in on bus to work. Display said “card not available”. Driver waved me on. Finished my shift, tapped on bus on way home, card appeared to be working.

Friday 24th: Received TFL email saying Thursdays payment had declined and card was blocked again. This time the button in my account said “pay debt”. Submitted details, £1.75 appeared on my bank account as pending. Card remained blocked, used Applepay to travel to work and back. Payment was taken successfully so I continued to use Applepay over the weekend.

Monday 27th: card still blocked. £7 still showed on my bank account as pending. Phoned TFL. They said the £5.25 from Wednesday had been paid. Advisor tried to charge the £1.75 again, I received a card declined email. They said to continue using Applepay and to phone back in a few days if the £1.75 was still not cleared.

Friday 31st. Card was still blocked. The transactions for £5.25 and £1.75 dropped off of pending and £7 was added back to my available balance. Went into my TFL account, clicked “pay debt” button and submitted details. Display changed to “request card approval”. Clicked it, £1.75 reappeared on my bank account as pending. Received email saying card was now approved.

Saturday 1st. Used card for travel. Payment was processed normally. £1.75 payment for “unpaid fares” was also processed and cleared.

The upshot is that my card now appears to be working again and I’ve ended up getting travel on Wednesday 22nd for free…..