Friendly Leap Card Agents (where to buy or top-up a leapcard)

bk · 11-01-2012 3:43pm

n97 mini wrote: »

As it's a purse, and buses are off-line, is it ever going to be possible to do this?

I can understand it working at train/Luas/shop machines, as they're all on-line and connected to the grid, and can tell the card to up their balance by x when they see the balance go up at the back-end.

I should write a FAQ on this, I've explained it so many times.

Auto-topup doesn't require an online ticket validator to work. Here is how it works:

1) You register your leapcard online and give them your direct debit details.
2) You activate the card once at a luas machine, dart validator or shop. This is a once only action, what it does is it writes a flag to your leap card saying the auto-topup is enabled and by how much to auto-topup.
3) Then everytime you board a bus, the offline bus validator sees that this flag is set and if your balance falls below x, it automatically applies y extra balance to your card and it records the transaction in it's memory.
4) When the bus gets back to the depot, it tells the backend system about adding y credit to your card and the backend system debits y amount from your bank account.

Make sense?

It is actually quiet a clever solution to the offline problem. It works in the same way in the UK with London Bus.

n97 mini · 11-01-2012 4:03pm

bk wrote: »

3) Then everytime you board a bus, the offline bus validator sees that this flag is set and if your balance falls below x, it automatically applies y extra balance to your card and it records the transaction in it's memory.

So does every bus need to know about every card, and whether they are auto-top up or not?

Hypothetically, if my card is not auto top-up now but tomorrow morning at 9am I go onto the Leap site and enter all my bank details, I will still have to bring it to a shop/train/Luas (i.e. online) validator if I want it to auto top-up tomorrow, as no bus will know about it being auto top-up until the following day?

And presumably the bus validator will have the ability to set the auto top-up flag for those who are happy to wait 24 hours?

noelfirl · 11-01-2012 4:38pm

The bus validator won't need to know that the card has auto topup enabled prior to encountering it. The card will know and flag this to the validator, the validator will know when the credit needs to be topped up and that the card can be auto topped up, will top the credit up and record that a top up has been applied. Bus returns to garage that evening, bus uploads lists of auto top ups to be reconciled. Once auto top up is enabled by a live end to the card, the auto top up will work anywhere.

n97 mini · 11-01-2012 6:00pm

noelfirl wrote: »

Once auto top up is enabled by a live end to the card, the auto top up will work anywhere.

So... if you go on-line and enable auto top-up on the website you will still have to get the flag set on the card in shop/luas/station, the bus won't be able to do it at any stage at all?

bk · 11-01-2012 6:13pm

n97 mini wrote: »

So does every bus need to know about every card, and whether they are auto-top up or not?

No the buses won't need to know about every card. If the card is auto-topup enabled or not is recorded on the actual card.

n97 mini wrote: »

Hypothetically, if my card is not auto top-up now but tomorrow morning at 9am I go onto the Leap site and enter all my bank details, I will still have to bring it to a shop/train/Luas (i.e. online) validator if I want it to auto top-up tomorrow, as no bus will know about it being auto top-up until the following day?

And presumably the bus validator will have the ability to set the auto top-up flag for those who are happy to wait 24 hours?

No, you will have to bring it to a shop/train/Luas to enable the auto-topup the first time. Buses can't enable auto-topup, even after 24 hours.

Well they could do it, but I'm guessing they will avoid that level of complexity and require you to go to the shop/train/luas to enable it as it is much simpler and less error prone.

Having to do it once shouldn't be too much of an inconvenience. I'm hoping that they will also allow you to order leap cards online with the auto topup enabled when it arrives.

noelfirl · 11-01-2012 7:10pm

To have auto top up flagging on buses would require either a live backend connection or pushing a white list of top up enabled cards to all buses regularly. It's unclear whether buses support having data pushed upon them rather then just dumping their data at the end of the day, but presumably they will be able to receive Leap card blacklists, so could theoretically take whitelists as well.

robd · 13-01-2012 11:24am

I set this thread up to list places where people were or were not able to buy or top-up a leapcard.

Please take technology and auto top-up feedback/discussions to the feedback thread.

stunmer · 16-03-2016 2:43pm

Sorry old thread!

Added credit to my leap card for the first time using www.leapcard.ie and selected payzone location to top it up.

When I went into a shop with payzone the man behind the counter did not know how I could get my online credit via payzone.

Is this common? Can I just top up my card in a shop without purchasing anything?

wench · 16-03-2016 2:45pm

He should just need to do a balance check to get the card to connect to the network and update.

Friendly Leap Card Agents (where to buy or top-up a leapcard)

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