Oyster, being a stand-alone digital wallet at the moment, couldn’t be used like this and given the fact that contactless Payments already exist it’s unlikely to ever happen that way.
When the Oyster processing eventually gets done in the same way as the contactless processing, however, then the Oyster card itself becomes redundant (or at least nothing more than a bespoke contactless card) as long as season tickets can be managed through the contactless management mechanisms. At that point, I’d expect season tickets to be managed on the back end, however, and not need anything on the card itself.
There isn’t a way of making the TfL card reader think it has been tapped on by an Oyster - a bit like how Apple/Google Pay makes it think it’s being tapped by a card?
I hope there’s a way of linking discounts from railcards or Student Oysters to contactless cards in the near future. It’s really annoying having to carry around and top up an Oyster to get the off-peak discount (especially since Oyster top ups via the TfL app are not instant). I imagine these discounts could be applied on the back end in the same way as season tickets.
It does give that impression. I also asked them via DM on Twitter. It took three months to get their final answer.
I asked in May and got this
“we don’t store transaction information on the debit card, can we ask why you believe this is happening?”
I explained what I had found out and then they said the would pass this on to the relevant department. I reminded them every few weeks that I still hadn’t had a reply and eventually in August got this:
“we won’t be able to disclose more information in regards to this issue. I understand that you are keen to find out more but we would not generally discuss our partners or card processing processes with our customers.”
It’s possible that they had changed this setting on new cards by then as my card was a year old by then (I don’t know if they have).
I wouldn’t call it bad customer service, I probably wouldn’t expect an answer from any bank really (though it would be nice). This thread wasn’t directed to anyone a Monzo, but at least there is a better reply.
So maybe it isn’t worth asking these questions with any particular bank unless you know they appreciate the curiosity of their customers (as Monzo seems to do).
