Do Oyster cards get demagnetized?

Oystercards don't use magnetic strips - they use a chip - therefore there's nothing to get demagnetised. And they don't have any power source on them, so they can't lose their power. Hmmm, I did wonder that, but I've never had one (live outside london so get paper travelcards).



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It's memory space, TfL recently said that there were 16.5 million dormant Oyster cards out there with just under 30 million pounds of credit on them. No computer system really wants to have to remember 16.5 million details on its active servers if it can avoid it. So dormant accounts are moved off the active system.

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Cons: A £7 cost applies when you get a standard or visitor card. You'll need to top it up in advance of travel. You can't use an Oyster card at any station between Reading and Iver.

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If you feel the need to have it attached to your person rather than in your pocket, then in stationer's such as WH Smith, Ryman etc you can buy an inexpensive lanyard with a plastic pouch. The Oyster card will fit inside the pouch and then there's no need to punch any holes.

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There is no expiry date on Oyster cards.

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There is no price difference between the Oyster card and contactless card. Every time you travel on London's public transport, your contactless payment card is charged the same fare as your Oyster, including cap prices (the maximum amount you'll pay daily and weekly to travel throughout London).

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So no matter how many times you travel on public transport using your Oyster card in London's zones 1 and 2, you will never be charged more than £8.10 a day. As of September 2021, Oyster cards also have a weekly cap. This runs from Monday to Sunday, and means you will never pay more than the weekly cap for travel.

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If you do not tap out your Oyster card, you will be charged the maximum fare for that journey. This this because most fares are based on zone, distance and time of travel.

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About a quarter of contactless payments are now made using either Apple or Google Pay, a figure that is ticking up all the time. In contrast, only 5.7m of the tens of millions of Oyster cards in circulation are still active. And as for paper tickets, in the past month just 1.7% of passengers bought them.

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