TfL card payments - field trials.

On Fri, 21 Jun 2024 08:53:41 +0100

Post by Roland Perry
I've started a new thread because the original one has rather lost its
way.
Did a wearable touch-in at Kings Cross yesterday (Thursday) lunchtime,
and here we are at 9am Friday and it's [still] showing as a 10p
Provisional payment to TfL on the linked debit card.
My Oyster app isn't showing the card I added earlier (no idea why) or
indeed my Oyster which I used the rest of the day; so I'll have to debug
that later.
The payment card app pinged me with the 10p charge as soon as I got some
mobile coverage. Presumably it'll ping me again when that gets converted
into a one-off single in Z1, but it hasn't happened yet.

Justr remember , you told us you use wearables because its less hassle
than carrying a wallet and using cards. So I don't mean to be rude, but
suck it up.

Roland Perry

2024-06-21 16:42:07 UTC

Justr remember , you told us you use wearables because its less hassle
than carrying a wallet and using cards. So I don't mean to be rude, but
suck it up.

Apparently you do want to be rude.

Anf the delay in payments going from provisional to final happens with
all cards.

--
Roland Perry

Recliner

2024-06-21 20:30:08 UTC

Justr remember , you told us you use wearables because its less hassle
than carrying a wallet and using cards. So I don't mean to be rude, but
suck it up.

Apparently you do want to be rude.
Anf the delay in payments going from provisional to final happens with
all cards.

As you already knew, and why, so why are you surprised each time it
happens?

Roland Perry

2024-06-23 09:02:07 UTC

Justr remember , you told us you use wearables because its less hassle
than carrying a wallet and using cards. So I don't mean to be rude, but
suck it up.

Apparently you do want to be rude.
Anf the delay in payments going from provisional to final happens with
all cards.

As you already knew, and why, so why are you surprised each time it
happens?

I was answering the point about the wearable's delay, which like every
other vendor is the same as a plastic card, but TfL seems to take at
least an extra day to process the charge (for both wearable and plastic
card). Normally the charges show up almost within seconds for
traditional vendors.

Why does it take TfL from 4am Friday, to 4am Saturday to 4am Sunday (and
at the time of writing 10am Sunday) to sort out the 10p entry charge,
merge it with the fare, and resolve them to one line item on my credit
card account?

--
Roland Perry

Recliner

2024-06-23 10:50:22 UTC

Justr remember , you told us you use wearables because its less hassle
than carrying a wallet and using cards. So I don't mean to be rude, but
suck it up.

Apparently you do want to be rude.
Anf the delay in payments going from provisional to final happens with
all cards.

As you already knew, and why, so why are you surprised each time it
happens?

I was answering the point about the wearable's delay, which like every
other vendor is the same as a plastic card, but TfL seems to take at
least an extra day to process the charge (for both wearable and plastic
card). Normally the charges show up almost within seconds for
traditional vendors.
Why does it take TfL from 4am Friday, to 4am Saturday to 4am Sunday (and
at the time of writing 10am Sunday) to sort out the 10p entry charge,
merge it with the fare, and resolve them to one line item on my credit
card account?

The fare day finishes at 04:29, not 04:00. Data then has to be gathered
from all the off-line readers and collected centrally, which might take
several hours. The processing can't start till the data gathering is
complete.

The system then has to turn yellow and pink reader touches into journeys
(about 10m a day, more than twice the total daily number of UK rail
journeys) and calculate the fare for each, including hopper fares. This is
a decidedly non-trivial task.

Then, it does a pass through all the journey data to calculate and apply
caps.

Cards have to be associated with Oyster accounts to take into account
season tickets and other discounts.

There probably has to be a manual sign-off or other sanity test at more
than one stage. Finally, the consolidated charges are sent to the banks or
Oyster for payment. It's about £15m a day.

To an uninformed person like you, this might all seem to be a trivial task
that can be done in 10 seconds on a laptop, but in the real world, it
really isn't.

Roland Perry

2024-06-24 10:08:13 UTC

Justr remember , you told us you use wearables because its less hassle
than carrying a wallet and using cards. So I don't mean to be rude, but
suck it up.

Apparently you do want to be rude.
Anf the delay in payments going from provisional to final happens with
all cards.

As you already knew, and why, so why are you surprised each time it
happens?

I was answering the point about the wearable's delay, which like every
other vendor is the same as a plastic card, but TfL seems to take at
least an extra day to process the charge (for both wearable and plastic
card). Normally the charges show up almost within seconds for
traditional vendors.
Why does it take TfL from 4am Friday, to 4am Saturday to 4am Sunday (and
at the time of writing 10am Sunday) to sort out the 10p entry charge,
merge it with the fare, and resolve them to one line item on my credit
card account?

The fare day finishes at 04:29, not 04:00. Data then has to be gathered
from all the off-line readers and collected centrally, which might take
several hours. The processing can't start till the data gathering is
complete.
The system then has to turn yellow and pink reader touches into journeys
(about 10m a day, more than twice the total daily number of UK rail
journeys) and calculate the fare for each, including hopper fares. This is
a decidedly non-trivial task.
Then, it does a pass through all the journey data to calculate and apply
caps.
Cards have to be associated with Oyster accounts to take into account
season tickets and other discounts.
There probably has to be a manual sign-off or other sanity test at more
than one stage. Finally, the consolidated charges are sent to the banks or
Oyster for payment. It's about £15m a day.
To an uninformed person like you,

Here we go again.

Post by Recliner
this might all seem to be a trivial task that can be done in 10 seconds
on a laptop, but in the real world, it really isn't.

It's now Monday, and I still have 10p "Pending" charges on my Credit
Card from Thursday.

--
Roland Perry

Recliner

2024-06-24 10:33:31 UTC

Justr remember , you told us you use wearables because its less hassle
than carrying a wallet and using cards. So I don't mean to be rude, but
suck it up.

Apparently you do want to be rude.
Anf the delay in payments going from provisional to final happens with
all cards.

As you already knew, and why, so why are you surprised each time it
happens?

I was answering the point about the wearable's delay, which like every
other vendor is the same as a plastic card, but TfL seems to take at
least an extra day to process the charge (for both wearable and plastic
card). Normally the charges show up almost within seconds for
traditional vendors.
Why does it take TfL from 4am Friday, to 4am Saturday to 4am Sunday (and
at the time of writing 10am Sunday) to sort out the 10p entry charge,
merge it with the fare, and resolve them to one line item on my credit
card account?

The fare day finishes at 04:29, not 04:00. Data then has to be gathered
from all the off-line readers and collected centrally, which might take
several hours. The processing can't start till the data gathering is
complete.
The system then has to turn yellow and pink reader touches into journeys
(about 10m a day, more than twice the total daily number of UK rail
journeys) and calculate the fare for each, including hopper fares. This is
a decidedly non-trivial task.
Then, it does a pass through all the journey data to calculate and apply
caps.
Cards have to be associated with Oyster accounts to take into account
season tickets and other discounts.
There probably has to be a manual sign-off or other sanity test at more
than one stage. Finally, the consolidated charges are sent to the banks or
Oyster for payment. It's about £15m a day.
To an uninformed person like you,

Here we go again.

Post by Recliner
this might all seem to be a trivial task that can be done in 10 seconds
on a laptop, but in the real world, it really isn't.

It's now Monday, and I still have 10p "Pending" charges on my Credit
Card from Thursday.

Isn't that a problem specific to your highly unusual payment method? If
you'd been wearing a smart watch linked to a phone, it would have been
updated on Saturday.

Roland Perry

2024-06-24 19:00:53 UTC

Post by Roland Perry
I've started a new thread because the original one has rather lost its
way.
Did a wearable touch-in at Kings Cross yesterday (Thursday) lunchtime,
and here we are at 9am Friday and it's [still] showing as a 10p
Provisional payment to TfL on the linked debit card.
My Oyster app isn't showing the card I added earlier (no idea
indeed my Oyster which I used the rest of the day; so I'll
have to debug that later.
The payment card app pinged me with the 10p charge as soon as I
got some mobile coverage. Presumably it'll ping me again when
that gets converted into a one-off single in Z1, but it hasn't

Justr remember , you told us you use wearables because its less hassle
than carrying a wallet and using cards. So I don't mean to be rude, but
suck it up.

Apparently you do want to be rude.
Anf the delay in payments going from provisional to final happens with
all cards.

As you already knew, and why, so why are you surprised each time it
happens?

I was answering the point about the wearable's delay, which like every
other vendor is the same as a plastic card, but TfL seems to take at
least an extra day to process the charge (for both wearable and plastic
card). Normally the charges show up almost within seconds for
traditional vendors.
Why does it take TfL from 4am Friday, to 4am Saturday to 4am Sunday (and
at the time of writing 10am Sunday) to sort out the 10p entry charge,
merge it with the fare, and resolve them to one line item on my credit
card account?

The fare day finishes at 04:29, not 04:00. Data then has to be gathered
from all the off-line readers and collected centrally, which might take
several hours. The processing can't start till the data gathering is
complete.
The system then has to turn yellow and pink reader touches into journeys
(about 10m a day, more than twice the total daily number of UK rail
journeys) and calculate the fare for each, including hopper fares. This is
a decidedly non-trivial task.
Then, it does a pass through all the journey data to calculate and apply
caps.
Cards have to be associated with Oyster accounts to take into account
season tickets and other discounts.
There probably has to be a manual sign-off or other sanity test at more
than one stage. Finally, the consolidated charges are sent to the banks or
Oyster for payment. It's about £15m a day.
To an uninformed person like you,

Here we go again.

Post by Recliner
this might all seem to be a trivial task that can be done in 10 seconds
on a laptop, but in the real world, it really isn't.

It's now Monday, and I still have 10p "Pending" charges on my Credit
Card from Thursday.

Isn't that a problem specific to your highly unusual payment method?

It's not that unusual, the chap in front of me at one barrier at the
weekend had one too.

Post by Recliner
If you'd been wearing a smart watch linked to a phone, it would have
been updated on Saturday.

If there was an inherent delay then the 10p charges wouldn't show up
straight away, and the £2.70 later in my case by before 8.30am Friday
which was when I first looked. It's consolidating them into £2.80 that's
being delayed.

Anyway, you say a trip on Thursday would show up on Saturday, is that
because it takes TfL from dawn on Friday to at least midnight Friday to
do the processing? So how did I get the £2.70 showing on Friday...

--
Roland Perry

Recliner

2024-06-25 12:10:40 UTC

Post by Roland Perry
I've started a new thread because the original one has rather lost its
way.
Did a wearable touch-in at Kings Cross yesterday (Thursday) lunchtime,
and here we are at 9am Friday and it's [still] showing as a 10p
Provisional payment to TfL on the linked debit card.
My Oyster app isn't showing the card I added earlier (no idea
indeed my Oyster which I used the rest of the day; so I'll
have to debug that later.
The payment card app pinged me with the 10p charge as soon as I
got some mobile coverage. Presumably it'll ping me again when
that gets converted into a one-off single in Z1, but it hasn't

Justr remember , you told us you use wearables because its less hassle
than carrying a wallet and using cards. So I don't mean to be rude, but
suck it up.

Apparently you do want to be rude.
Anf the delay in payments going from provisional to final happens with
all cards.

As you already knew, and why, so why are you surprised each time it
happens?

I was answering the point about the wearable's delay, which like every
other vendor is the same as a plastic card, but TfL seems to take at
least an extra day to process the charge (for both wearable and plastic
card). Normally the charges show up almost within seconds for
traditional vendors.
Why does it take TfL from 4am Friday, to 4am Saturday to 4am Sunday (and
at the time of writing 10am Sunday) to sort out the 10p entry charge,
merge it with the fare, and resolve them to one line item on my credit
card account?

The fare day finishes at 04:29, not 04:00. Data then has to be gathered
from all the off-line readers and collected centrally, which might take
several hours. The processing can't start till the data gathering is
complete.
The system then has to turn yellow and pink reader touches into journeys
(about 10m a day, more than twice the total daily number of UK rail
journeys) and calculate the fare for each, including hopper fares. This is
a decidedly non-trivial task.
Then, it does a pass through all the journey data to calculate and apply
caps.
Cards have to be associated with Oyster accounts to take into account
season tickets and other discounts.
There probably has to be a manual sign-off or other sanity test at more
than one stage. Finally, the consolidated charges are sent to the banks or
Oyster for payment. It's about £15m a day.
To an uninformed person like you,

Here we go again.

Post by Recliner
this might all seem to be a trivial task that can be done in 10 seconds
on a laptop, but in the real world, it really isn't.

It's now Monday, and I still have 10p "Pending" charges on my Credit
Card from Thursday.

Isn't that a problem specific to your highly unusual payment method?

It's not that unusual, the chap in front of me at one barrier at the
weekend had one too.

Post by Recliner
If you'd been wearing a smart watch linked to a phone, it would have
been updated on Saturday.

Yes, for the reasons I've already explained.

Post by Roland Perry
Anyway, you say a trip on Thursday would show up on Saturday, is that
because it takes TfL from dawn on Friday to at least midnight Friday to
do the processing? So how did I get the £2.70 showing on Friday...

It obviously takes a number of hours to perform the multiple processes. Perhaps it's quicker on some days than others?

Roland Perry

2024-06-25 13:52:07 UTC

Post by Roland Perry
I've started a new thread because the original one has rather
lost its way.
Did a wearable touch-in at Kings Cross yesterday (Thursday)
lunchtime, and here we are at 9am Friday and it's [still]
Provisional payment to TfL on the linked debit card.
My Oyster app isn't showing the card I added earlier (no idea
indeed my Oyster which I used the rest of the day; so I'll
have to debug that later.
The payment card app pinged me with the 10p charge as soon as I
got some mobile coverage. Presumably it'll ping me again when
that gets converted into a one-off single in Z1, but it hasn't

Justr remember , you told us you use wearables because its
less hassle than carrying a wallet and using cards. So I don't
mean to be rude, but suck it up.

Apparently you do want to be rude.
Anf the delay in payments going from provisional to final happens with
all cards.

As you already knew, and why, so why are you surprised each time it
happens?

I was answering the point about the wearable's delay, which like every
other vendor is the same as a plastic card, but TfL seems to take at
least an extra day to process the charge (for both wearable and plastic
card). Normally the charges show up almost within seconds for
traditional vendors.
Why does it take TfL from 4am Friday, to 4am Saturday to 4am Sunday (and
at the time of writing 10am Sunday) to sort out the 10p entry charge,
merge it with the fare, and resolve them to one line item on my credit
card account?

The fare day finishes at 04:29, not 04:00. Data then has to be gathered
from all the off-line readers and collected centrally, which might take
several hours. The processing can't start till the data gathering is
complete.
The system then has to turn yellow and pink reader touches into journeys
(about 10m a day, more than twice the total daily number of UK rail
journeys) and calculate the fare for each, including hopper fares. This is
a decidedly non-trivial task.
Then, it does a pass through all the journey data to calculate and apply
caps.
Cards have to be associated with Oyster accounts to take into account
season tickets and other discounts.
There probably has to be a manual sign-off or other sanity test at more
than one stage. Finally, the consolidated charges are sent to the banks or
Oyster for payment. It's about £15m a day.
To an uninformed person like you,

Here we go again.

Post by Recliner
this might all seem to be a trivial task that can be done in 10 seconds
on a laptop, but in the real world, it really isn't.

It's now Monday, and I still have 10p "Pending" charges on my Credit
Card from Thursday.

Isn't that a problem specific to your highly unusual payment method?

It's not that unusual, the chap in front of me at one barrier at the
weekend had one too.

Post by Recliner
If you'd been wearing a smart watch linked to a phone, it would have
been updated on Saturday.

Yes, for the reasons I've already explained.

Actually you haven't (explained why this is ongoing the Tuesday after a
Thursday)

It obviously takes a number of hours to perform the multiple processes.
Perhaps it's quicker on some days than others?

How many hours in Friday + Saturday + Sunday + Monday + over half of
Tuesday?

--
Roland Perry

Recliner

2024-06-25 15:18:01 UTC

Post by Roland Perry
I've started a new thread because the original one has rather
lost its way.
Did a wearable touch-in at Kings Cross yesterday (Thursday)
lunchtime, and here we are at 9am Friday and it's [still]
Provisional payment to TfL on the linked debit card.
My Oyster app isn't showing the card I added earlier (no idea
indeed my Oyster which I used the rest of the day; so I'll
have to debug that later.
The payment card app pinged me with the 10p charge as soon as I
got some mobile coverage. Presumably it'll ping me again when
that gets converted into a one-off single in Z1, but it hasn't

Justr remember , you told us you use wearables because its
less hassle than carrying a wallet and using cards. So I don't
mean to be rude, but suck it up.

Apparently you do want to be rude.
Anf the delay in payments going from provisional to final happens with
all cards.

As you already knew, and why, so why are you surprised each time it
happens?

I was answering the point about the wearable's delay, which like every
other vendor is the same as a plastic card, but TfL seems to take at
least an extra day to process the charge (for both wearable and plastic
card). Normally the charges show up almost within seconds for
traditional vendors.
Why does it take TfL from 4am Friday, to 4am Saturday to 4am Sunday (and
at the time of writing 10am Sunday) to sort out the 10p entry charge,
merge it with the fare, and resolve them to one line item on my credit
card account?

The fare day finishes at 04:29, not 04:00. Data then has to be gathered
from all the off-line readers and collected centrally, which might take
several hours. The processing can't start till the data gathering is
complete.
The system then has to turn yellow and pink reader touches into journeys
(about 10m a day, more than twice the total daily number of UK rail
journeys) and calculate the fare for each, including hopper fares. This is
a decidedly non-trivial task.
Then, it does a pass through all the journey data to calculate and apply
caps.
Cards have to be associated with Oyster accounts to take into account
season tickets and other discounts.
There probably has to be a manual sign-off or other sanity test at more
than one stage. Finally, the consolidated charges are sent to the banks or
Oyster for payment. It's about £15m a day.
To an uninformed person like you,

Here we go again.

Post by Recliner
this might all seem to be a trivial task that can be done in 10 seconds
on a laptop, but in the real world, it really isn't.

It's now Monday, and I still have 10p "Pending" charges on my Credit
Card from Thursday.

Isn't that a problem specific to your highly unusual payment method?

It's not that unusual, the chap in front of me at one barrier at the
weekend had one too.

Post by Recliner
If you'd been wearing a smart watch linked to a phone, it would have
been updated on Saturday.

Yes, for the reasons I've already explained.

Actually you haven't (explained why this is ongoing the Tuesday after a
Thursday)

It obviously takes a number of hours to perform the multiple processes.
Perhaps it's quicker on some days than others?

How many hours in Friday + Saturday + Sunday + Monday + over half of
Tuesday?

Isn't that down to the strange payment mechanism associated with your
bracelet credit card?

Roland Perry

2024-06-28 07:01:22 UTC

Post by Roland Perry
I've started a new thread because the original one has rather
lost its way.
Did a wearable touch-in at Kings Cross yesterday (Thursday)
lunchtime, and here we are at 9am Friday and it's [still]
Provisional payment to TfL on the linked debit card.
My Oyster app isn't showing the card I added earlier (no idea
indeed my Oyster which I used the rest of the day; so I'll
have to debug that later.
The payment card app pinged me with the 10p charge as soon as I
got some mobile coverage. Presumably it'll ping me again when
that gets converted into a one-off single in Z1, but it hasn't

Justr remember , you told us you use wearables because its
less hassle than carrying a wallet and using cards. So I don't
mean to be rude, but suck it up.

Apparently you do want to be rude.
Anf the delay in payments going from provisional to final happens with
all cards.

As you already knew, and why, so why are you surprised each time it
happens?

I was answering the point about the wearable's delay, which like every
other vendor is the same as a plastic card, but TfL seems to take at
least an extra day to process the charge (for both wearable and plastic
card). Normally the charges show up almost within seconds for
traditional vendors.
Why does it take TfL from 4am Friday, to 4am Saturday to 4am Sunday (and
at the time of writing 10am Sunday) to sort out the 10p entry charge,
merge it with the fare, and resolve them to one line item on my credit
card account?

The fare day finishes at 04:29, not 04:00. Data then has to be gathered
from all the off-line readers and collected centrally, which might take
several hours. The processing can't start till the data gathering is
complete.
The system then has to turn yellow and pink reader touches into journeys
(about 10m a day, more than twice the total daily number of UK rail
journeys) and calculate the fare for each, including hopper fares. This is
a decidedly non-trivial task.
Then, it does a pass through all the journey data to calculate and apply
caps.
Cards have to be associated with Oyster accounts to take into account
season tickets and other discounts.
There probably has to be a manual sign-off or other sanity test at more
than one stage. Finally, the consolidated charges are sent to the banks or
Oyster for payment. It's about £15m a day.
To an uninformed person like you,

Here we go again.

Post by Recliner
this might all seem to be a trivial task that can be done in 10 seconds
on a laptop, but in the real world, it really isn't.

It's now Monday, and I still have 10p "Pending" charges on my Credit
Card from Thursday.

Isn't that a problem specific to your highly unusual payment method?

It's not that unusual, the chap in front of me at one barrier at the
weekend had one too.

Post by Recliner
If you'd been wearing a smart watch linked to a phone, it would have
been updated on Saturday.

Yes, for the reasons I've already explained.

Actually you haven't (explained why this is ongoing the Tuesday after a
Thursday)

It obviously takes a number of hours to perform the multiple processes.
Perhaps it's quicker on some days than others?

How many hours in Friday + Saturday + Sunday + Monday + over half of
Tuesday?

Isn't that down to the strange payment mechanism associated with your
bracelet credit card?

Once again, no. If I pay any other vendor with the wearable, the charge
goes through in seconds. OK, so TfL has a built in delay because they
batch it up and submit the next day, but it's a week after that "next
day", and there's still 10p entry-charges showing on my associated bank
card.

--
Roland Perry

Recliner

2024-06-21 09:49:30 UTC

As you recently learned from your previous experience, a card charge
incurred on a Thursday probably won't show up till Saturday morning. So why
are you surprised that it's not yet visible on Friday morning?

Roland Perry

2024-06-23 08:56:45 UTC

Because people claim it should have been process "soon after" 4am on the
Friday morning. Why the whole extra 24hrs delay.

--
Roland Perry

Roland Perry

2024-06-23 08:54:57 UTC