Some cards are fee-free. Some cards add a flat rate for foreign currency transactions, which adds a massive amount to small transactions. Some cards are fee-free, but the exchange rate is horrible, like 5% worse. Some cards that are designed for travel let you add 2 or more currencies to the card – then when you rent a scooter or bicycle in another city, you never really know what currency is being used, unless you check your statement. Some cards, it’s really hard to check your statement when you are out-of-country.
Bit of a downer really.
The child concession card is available at the airport, but not at most other places.
Searching around for the oyster card seller at the airport is the last thing we wanted to do when we landed. Credit card is easy.
The Oyster card pre-dates, by many years, tap-and-go phones, and was introduced at a time when tap-and-go cards were also new.
I’ve never seen an ATM that allows a tap. They ALL want my card fed to them.
Maybe some contactless ATMs exist but, when traveling, I would not think my phone would be enough to get cash. I’d need the actual card. (says the guy who barely remembers his ATM PIN)
(a) The Visitor Oyster isn’t much of a bargain, being less flexible than the regular Oyster you could buy on arrival
(b) The regular Oyster (non-refundable initial fee) is less of a bargain than just using a contactless card or phone pay system
Most people don’t need them anymore. They are needed if you have a concession fare or for people who do not have a bank account or credit card but can scrape together £5-10 at a time to get around.
The first time we took our kids to London, my wife and I used tap. My older daughter had a Young Visitors Oyster Card for discounted fares and my younger daughter was free so she just went through the fare gate with one of us.
Part of the reason is historical - Oyster cards are older than the tap-to-pay system that allows you to use any contactless payment card, so many Londoners still have a dedicated Oyster card. Also, if you’re concerned about privacy and don’t want the trips you make to be traceable to you, you might get an Oyster card and top it with cash.
My ATM / Debit card is with Chase. The ATMs inside and outside of Chase bank branches are probably 90% contactless now. Yes, those new-fangled machines still have a slot for chipped cards too. And around here, Chase banks are more common than McDonalds; they’re everywhere.
I agree that I’ve not seen many ATMs other than theirs which are contactless. Although I don’t pay much attention to them either. If any are contactless, I’d expect them to be at the branches of large national Brand X banks, not the sort of third party rip-off machines found in 7-11s and bars and such that I’m more likely to be near to notice.
I just noticed that I’ve never tried using a non-Chase debit card at a Chase contactless ATM. I have one such card, and will give it a contactless try today & report back. On the one hand I’d be surprised technologically if they refused contactless use of an other-branded card. But banks’ arbitrary refusal to play nice together is legendary. We shall see.
I definitely would not travel outside my local metro area, or especially not outside the USA, without an actual physical debit card to access emergency cash if my own cash stash disappeared. Yes, you can charge cash to a credit card, but that has a real spotty success rate outside the USA too.
Being a long way from home without any functioning credit card and no cash is a cold, dark, miserable difficult-to-extricate experience by far best avoided. If that means two belts and two suspenders, so be it.
I’ve never seen a contactless ATM. I don’t imagine that it’s especially high risk to either party as I’m sure strict limits apply, and it actually does make sense.
I absolutely hate machines that insist on swallowing your credit card and then (hopefully) spit it out again, like most ATMs. One time I had to park at a parking meter where the only way to pay was by offering your credit card to the machine that would swallow the card whole. It was a cold winter day and I could just imagine the works freezing up. I said, no thanks, would rather risk a parking ticket, and went about my business. (Did not get a parking ticket.)
Losing a debit or credit card to a malfunctioning machine while traveling must truly be a nightmare!
Agree the “I’ve got your card in my jaws and I might spit it out later for you” machines are nerve-wracking.
A shortcoming of the chip-reading system is that it can take several seconds for all the computers to finish yabbering with each other and render a yeah/nay decision. You pulling your card out too soon will crash that effort. Because people are too clueless to read and follow the on-screen directions, they add a grabber to the machine so it won’t let you pull out prematurely.
Of course once it has a card-grabber, it also has card-grabber malfunctions. I’ve never had a malf myself, but statistics being what they are, they must happen.
Most gas pumps around here are like that. And most parking meter pay stations. I’ve seen a few pumps around the city with contactless tap pads. Which oddly enough seem more hit and miss than the insert-chip-card kind. Sometimes the contactless machines like my card, and sometimes they don’t. But boy I’m happy when I find one. Most of my fill-ups are at my local station where the grabbers are reliable and contactless is not yet available. But I’ll sure switch to contactless as soon as they install newer pumps with that feature. Whichever decade that will be.
Worth pointing out that London Transport will consider your card used through something like Apple Pay on your phone as separate to the same card in its physical form. i.e. don’t tap in with your card on the Phone and then tap out with the actual card as you’ll be charged two maximum fares.
Also the bus is £1.75 to go anywhere but that gives you unlimited travel within the hour. i.e. you can catch consecutive buses within that hour and it’ll cost you only one standard fare. Though bus, train and tube are also all subject to a daily cap. So once you hit that, everything’s free for the rest of the day anyway.
I was a bit nervous about this before traveling to London last year.
It is so incredibly easy.
Each traveler needs to pick a single credit card, phone, watch, etc. with tap to pay enabled. Once you pick a form, use it every time, and don’t change. As long as you use the same card (or phone) all day, you will get the Oyster discounts.
Some cards have a foreign transaction fee. If you have a card that does not have a foreign transaction fee, use that one. My basic Costco Citi card worked perfectly. I used the Citi card loaded in Google Pay, my wife used her Citi card loaded in Apple Pay.
I never used any cash for 10 days in London for 6 people. Card worked everywhere.
If you are traveling with someone aged between 11 and 18 (16? I don’t remember) they can get an Oyster card setup with a discount. I used an old Oyster card from the 2000s, took it to the service desk in a tube stop (I think King’s Cross St. Pancras) and they added the discount to the card for two weeks. Only trouble was having to add money to the Oyster card occasionally, but that too is incredibly easy. At every tube station, find a pay station, tap the Oyster card, select the amount, then tap your payment card.
That should work. AIUI, the merchants in an Apple Pay transaction have no way of finding out which underlying card is behind a payment, so for them, separate wallets using the same card would show up as separate identities.
I still have a (useless) Presto card for Toronto’s subway system, from the brief period where they moved to contactless payment but hadn’t yet allowed credit cards to be used.
I can use my Ventra card in Chicago to pay for other riders with me. It just knows if I tap multiple times within a couple minutes that each tap is another rider. No fuss at all. Done it many times. I’d be surprised if London transit wasn’t that smart.