From Thursday the option of using contactless bank cards to pay for some bus journeys will be open to Londoners (view press release). TfL have confirmed plans to upgrade all Oyster card readers across London to work at the touch of a bank-issued debit or credit card.
With the move originally set to be implemented during the Olympics, the timeline was eventually scrapped. Shashi Verma, TfL director of customer experience explained: “We will only roll it out once we are confident it is 100% robust.”
The switch to contactless payment represents a plan to reduce commissions and processing costs for TfL as well as improving commuter experience. The need to keep – and top up –an Oyster card will be alleviated. However, the move has received some criticism from the London Assembly which has raised questions about the security and cost-saving potential of a new system.
Whitepapers
Related reading
Central banks best suited to issue digital currencies
By Aaran Fronda A recent report by the Official Monetary and Financial Institutions Forum (OMFIF) said that central banks rather than private ... read more
Instant payments: innovations inbound for corporates
In 2020, instant payments look set to continue their current trajectory to become the biggest trend in payments. While these schemes already offer numerous benefits to corporates, leveraging innovations such as APIs and request to pay will go some way to unlocking their full potential, argues Michael Knetsch
Obstacles exist for banks to meet ECB’s instant payments goal
The cost of joining instant payment platforms will be one of many hurdles banks and payment services providers must overcome to meet ... read more
Banks must be aware of “biases” in data used to train ML models
Financial institutions need to be conscious of biases in the historical data that is being used to train machine learning (ML) models, ... read more
