Yesterday during the Monzo outage I used Android Pay for my TfL travels around London . I haven’t done that for ~6 months (just been using Monzo for a long time), and I was surprised today that their summary is actually pretty helpful. They list the locations and times of the charges, as well as showing them on the map for overview, like this:
There were quite a few times when I wasn’t quite sure why my TfL charge was higher than expected, because I forgot about some of the travel I had on the day. Then had to check the records online to clear things up. Having a similar overview (or something even better that I cannot imagine yet:) in Monzo for travel would be very handy, I think. I really like the informativeness of the Monzo app, and feels like this is in similar direction.
That does look really good obviously it might be trickier for Monzo to get to this data if they don’t have a similar partnership to Android Pay’s with TFL.
But this is exactly the kind of functionality that would go hand in hand with the ability for Monzo to remind you if you forget to tap out / update your journey history for you, which Tom’s always talking about
Speaking about TfL info improvements, I bought some souvenirs the other day from the London Transport Museum and it appears in Monzo’s records as “Transport for London”. Was it due to the same payment terminals used at both ticket machines and LT Museum, just like making payment at a Boots branch where it does not display the branch’s exact location?
While London Transport Museum is a registered charity the Transport for London’s Shop is located in the museum. The shop is part of TfL not part of the charity. Therefore purchases in the shop should be appearing as TfL
I might be wrong, but I think TfL only checks with your bank at the “start of the day” (when it first sees your card/active card check) and when it comes to charge you (start of the next day). All the other times it just remembers where it saw your card (bank interactions are slow - TfL need to process touches within ~200ms IIRC to handle the speed of people touching in and then having the barrier open in time).
However, with Android Pay since you are touching with a smart device, when the terminal queries “I’m merchant name TFL, merchant id 34353, Location TottinghamCourtRoad. What is your card number?”, the phone can then say “I’m Cardnumber xxxx, here’s the cryptogram for you to send to the bank” (which is never sent to the bank as TfL is just tracking the card numbers) - however, your phone now knows you at at TCR and can update the display.
That’s my understanding of how it works and why it may be “impossible” for Monzo to easily update the App with where you’ve been (they’ll probably need to have TfL poll them in the “back channel” when TfL see a Monzo card)
I’m considering writing some internal training on how to handle TfL queries better. If I do, I’d love to make at least the basic information public. Let me know if this is something the community would like further insight into!
Come to think of it, being able to add Monzo to Android Pay, and then use that for TfL would also be a solution, as you’d have both location tracking in Android Pay, and transactions in the Monzo app, I guess?
Journeys made using a (or any other contactless ) appear in the app not long after completing the journey. Journeys made using an Oyster card can take up to 24 hours to appear.
Once the API is ready it would be easy to show this info in the app, similar to what Flux are doing with receipts
Yes, it should be able to show you the last 12 months worth of journey history for each contactless . You need a TfL account to use the app (https://contactless.tfl.gov.uk) and you need to add your to your TfL account to see your journey history.
I’m not sure if TfL keep all of your journey history if your card hasn’t been added to a TfL account, but they would keep up to 12 months worth of journey history for your after adding it.
. I haven’t done that for ~6 months (just been using Monzo for a long time), and I was surprised today that their summary is actually pretty helpful. They list the locations and times of the charges, as well as showing them on the map for overview, like this:
obviously it might be trickier for Monzo to get to this data if they don’t have a similar partnership to 
app that can show you the 
journeys you’ve made using your 
, along with their associated charges 
:
. You need a TfL account to use the app (
, how can I reach you? 