The death of Orange Card

[hellymedic]

What would the kids do?

[Jaded]

On Monday, I took a train from Cam & Dursley to Bristol. It's an unmanned station with a ticket machine and signs up warning that if you don't get a ticket before boarding the train, there will be expensive consequences. So I got a ticket from the machine — and it only took cards. It also only seemed to offer tickets to half a dozen popular destinations, so I don't know what happens if you either were going somewhere else or didn't have a card. I expect in practice the conductor-inspector-guard-train manager would sell you a ticket if you didn't seem to be evading, but it seems they don't have to.

I had the same experience a couple o weeks ago when I was going to  gig at Thekla. If I hadn't a card with me I'd have got a note ready for when the Train Manager came down the train. I think there would have been more of a problem at Temple Meads if the train had been packed and the Train Manager hadn't been able to get down to check tickets.

[Cudzoziemiec]

When I got to Temple Meads, it wouldn't have made any difference if I hadn't had a ticket (though it was checked on the train). There were staff at the barriers who saw me pushing my bike and opened the barrier without me even having to get my ticket out. I've experienced similar before.

(A gig at the Thekla? Don't think I've been there since 1991!)

[Cudzoziemiec]

What would the kids do?

Don't know. I wondered the same upthread. But I suppose that they will have smartphones from the age at which they would be able to handle money anyway.

[Kim]

What would the kids do?

Don't know. I wondered the same upthread. But I suppose that they will have smartphones from the age at which they would be able to handle money anyway.

Or a pre-paid card of some sort.  Contactless would seem eminently suitable for that sort of thing.  I imagine it would work much like Oyster.

[Cudzoziemiec]

I'm not aware of anything like that. There are Oysters for TfL and similar schemes for some other regions, supermarkets run their own schemes — marketed to parents of students, atm — but is there any pre-paid card that's as universally accepted as cash (or indeed debit/credit cards and mobile)?

[Dibdib]

Visa Electron still exists, and there used to be Solo until fairly recently. Not strictly "pre-pay cards" but linked to young persons accounts with absolutely no overdraft available. And then obviously there's the pre-paid Mastercards you can buy in cornershops, which just work like any other Mastercard IIRC.

No idea if any of them are contactless.

[perpetual dan]

Go Henry do a pre-paid contactless VISA card, marketed as for kids.

[mcshroom]

My sister's Seconday School moved to cashless payments 5 or so years ago. They all had an oyster card style system, topped up either online or at a meter. The benefits were supposedly that it meant that students couldn't have their money stolen by bullies, and that it would get the students through the luch queue checkouts faster* (which it did, and we do the same at work for this reason).

Like most new technologies, I'm sure children will adapt to whatever the new 'normal' becomes far more easily than us older people as it just be 'the way things always are.

*A side benefit we accidentally discovered was that her card also worked all the lifts on holiday in Austria one summer as it must have been set up the same way as their season tickets were.

[Kim]

Visa Electron still exists

I had a Switch card (and indeed a chequebook) from the age of 13, presumably due to a tame bank manager bending the rules or something.

My brother, who went to a different secondary school, had an account with a different bank (for branch accessibility reasons) and got Visa Electron.  This turned out to be useful for buying underage smoking materials from the kiosk at the local Budgens, and....well, that's it really.


Not entirely dissimilar, the cashless purchasing scheme run by UKC Hostitlity was heavily marketed to parents in the paperwork received by freshers before arriving at uni.  Naturally, they jumped at the chance to send Little Johnny to university with plenty of credit so they'd be able to buy food and biros in the campus shop even if they squandered the rest of their student loan on ...well, tuition fees or accommodation or something, presumably.

Imagine Little Johnny's reaction on discovering that the campus shop was run by the Stupid Union and therefore not part of the scheme, and the card was therefore only useful for purchasing Rubberfood lunches and drinks in the assorted college bars.


I'm sure there's a lesson here, but I can't quite put my finger on it...   

[Cudzoziemiec]

Apparently Moscow's version of Oyster is a bit more flexible – in addition to metro and bus, it can be used to pay for car parking and... hire bikes! 
http://troika.mos.ru/about/