Historical version 13 of Oyster Card (view current version)
Oyster Cards are the replacement for the old paper travelcards, for use on tubes, buses, Trams and overland trains in London.
They are contactless smartcards and do not need to be inserted into ticket machines, merely put close to a reader.
They can be used in many different ways, either as a sort of season ticket, or as a prepaid purse to buy tickets with. At the moment they are being issued to replace weekly, monthly and yearly travelcards of the old variety.
Routemaster conductors now carry little readers that will read your Oyster card. Other buses have a fixed reader next to the driver's seat - note this means that pre-pay users may only board [bendy buses]? by the front door.
There are plans to make pre-pay more clever so that for example if you take several bus journeys using pre-pay, the maximum amount you will be charged is the cost of a suitable bus pass. These plans keep getting put back.
A useful hint mentioned in the 2005 fares and tickets 2005 guide is that if your Oyster card contains only pre-pay (ie no travelcard) then any adult may use your card for pre-pay travel.
I bought one of these recently. I love it. Getting on buses is great, too, because there's no more need for the driver to squint at your ugly photocard picture and the expiry date on the travelcard. Whist buying it, I was warned strongly by the man in the office not to lose it, because the process for replacing a lost card is slow, tedious and annoying. I felt that was worth mentioning here. -- Earle
I'm very happy with mine. The one problem I've noticed is that, sometimes, I can go through a gate too close to the person in front, and you have to wait for the light on the reader to go orange before you try and open it. -- blech