Offline CC/DC billing on Pub Trans

ED E

So as I understand it from pervious threads the TFL system is:

1. Credit/Debit presented at entry reader, transmitted at convenience back
2. Credit/Debit presented at exit, transmitted same
3. Some hours later transaction attempted with processor

This allows you to have the fast turnstyle/bus dwell times and avoids huge queues at choke points while one lads Swiss bank takes 90 seconds to auth the tx, etc.

The problem being the transaction may fail and TFL lose the £1.20 or whatever it is.

My question is can TFL black that card from repeat use (surely that lookup would be too onerous for embedded readers) or can those so inclined constantly use an expired/cancelled debit card to travel for free?

devnull

Note that some cards require real time 'online auth' (usually those with bad or no credit history) or they will not allow a transaction to take place, although some of the bigger card issuers are using some workarounds to get around this and some providers are allowing their cards to not require online auth for very small amounts but need it for higher amounts.

Despite popular belief to suggest otherwise, it is possible to have an online auth only contactless card, although in the UK most banks opt to either give full offline auth contactless cards to their customers and simply give the customers with poor credit rating a card without contactless at all.

ED E

My question is more about what TFL are doing, not the merchant services providers (I have an N26 card which "instant" clears every tx).

devnull

See here:
https://tfl.gov.uk/fares-and-payments/contactless/my-card-doesn-t-work

ED E

Maybe they are blacking:

Contactless bank cards differ from traditional credit and debit cards in
that the information required by the bank for each transaction is not
held on a magnetic strip, but on ‘smart chip’ held in the card. Dubbed
‘Wave and Pay’ by the industry, the chip is activated using a radio
frequency when waved over a contactless reader. The reader then
records the information and checks it against a ‘deny list’ provided by
the banks. If approved, a message is sent to debit the customer’s
account

Non technical document: https://www.london.gov.uk/moderngov/documents/s7401/The%20Future%20of%20Ticketing%20-%20Appendix%201.pdf
This probably wouldn't/couldn't include foreign banks.

Oh, having a deeper google on it Monzo (Disruptor Bank) say:

This is almost always caused by unpaid fares on your card from TfL.

When this happens, TfL blacklist your card and ask you to get in touch with us.

So there is a fraud prevention system in place and if the NTA were to copy it (eventually) they'd only ever "take a hit" once or maybe twice. As soon as we can get away from the goddamn wayfarers.

Dravokivich

Well they couldn't launch leap without being able to block leap cards. So I doubt this is something they'll skip by.

ED E

A slightly different problem. NTA control the issuance of LEAP so at most the cohort is a few million cards. If you take the number of credit + debit cards in the world that's at least hundreds of millions of cards.

Dravokivich

Their system would still need to respond regardless of NFC device. I'd expect it to be the first thing they look to address once the finance arrangements are looking solid.