The Open Guide to London: the free London guide

Oyster Cards are the replacement for the old paper travelcards, for use on tubes, buses, tramlinks 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.

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 (although I haven't tried it on a Routemaster yet - I don't know how conductors deal with it). 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 emailed TfL about using Oystercards on Routemasters and they told me that currently you'll show the conductor the record card that comes with your Oystercard. In the future they'll have portable readers. The only problem with that approach is that I've twice extended my Oystercard over the web and they haven't sent me a new record card. -- davorg

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. As to Routemasters, they tend to look at it a bit strangely then let you carry on regardless. -- blech

I've never had trouble using mine on a Routemaster. I just show the Oystercard to the conductor. I don't think I have a "record card", or if I do I've lost it. --Kake

Kake, doesn't that mean that you get free travel on all London buses whether or not your Oystercard actually has any tickets on it? That's cool :) --davorg