Hi All.
We are visiting London in a little over 2 weeks and when we last visited about a decade ago we used the Oyster cards though it seems now you can use a NFC card or your phone. Does anyone have any recent experience using this in lieu of visitor Oyster card.
I used my phone during my May 2022 trip. Worked well for the whole trip. Daily caps were applied when appropriate. I’m on iPhone and have the transit express feature enabled. So there’s no need to wake up or unlock my phone. Not sure if android phones have a similar feature.
https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT212171
Edit to add. Phone seems to be just as fast as oyster card.
Contactless cards?
On the tube, river bus and relevant trains you tap in and tap out. On buses you tap on boarding, you don’t tap on exiting. One card or device per person.
A couple of considerations.
While Oyster works out your daily cap, contactless also works out your weekly cap. You'd be charged the lower of the sum of your daily cap or weekly cap. Weekly cap is based on your ride from Monday to Sunday.
A weekly cap is roughly the cost of 5 daily cap totals.
Contactless covers a wider part of London and Southeast networks. For example, if you have to visit Windsor station of great western line, you can pay with contactless rather than oyster.
Same for Luton Airport Parkway and St Albans.
However, you can't enjoy railcard discounts on Contactless, but discounts of some rail cards can be loaded to Oyster.
Oyster card is not reused or maybe even recycled. Not getting a new Oyster card can reduce plastic waste.
There is no difference in user experience at all - in terms of tapping in and out.
Oyster does do weekly caps.
I quote from TfL- "Weekly cap
A weekly cap limits how much you pay for all your journeys in a fixed Monday to Sunday period. It works using adult rate pay as you go on contactless (card or device) or Oyster."
You can't use advance fares on contactless. So to Luton Airport Parkway, always check as you can often get very cheap off peak advance fares.
Thanks for the info! That's useful.
Oyster didn't have weekly capping until relatively recently.
For most people the Oyster card is getting to be a bit of a legacy product. The main exceptions are those that qualify for discounts, those who want longer term seasons or those who don't have a workable contactless payment method.
Just wanted clarification - do you actually need to download an app or just tap and pay as if you were using Apple Pay at a store? TfL app seemed to only be for UK residents as you needed a UK address.
it's just easier to use a CC and tap and pay, just like you will all over London. I used it on the Tube and busses with no problem.
Cash is not king.
do you actually need to download an app or just tap and pay as if you were using Apple Pay at a store?
You don't need an app - just tap with your device/card
Registering your card via the website or app is useful for checking the fares have all registered correctly but is not obligatory.
I used a contactless credit card in London last June and it worked great - the daily limits were applied as appropriate. Just make sure you know the policy of your card issuer regarding foreign transaction fees so you aren't surprised. I used a Capital One debit card and my travel companion used a Capital One visa, both have no fees. However, each person needs their own separate card to tap in/out - you can't pay for a group with one card as far as I know.
Almost correct. You can’t use one card to pay for more than one person. But you can use other devices such as phone or smart watch pay linked to that card. So, you could for example use a credit card, and a phone and a watch both linked to the same account to cover 3 people.
