I have to say that in the past few weeks I seem to be getting stuck behind people with American accents trying and failing to use contactless cards and/or Android pay on TfL services quite a lot. I wonder what the problem is.
Not just people from the USA I'm sure. Anyone using anything other than an oyster takes longer than an oyster card. I used my Amex card for a double points promotion a couple of months ago and noticed it was slower to process at the gate than the oyster card. The same with those using mobiles and even worse, the watches. It just seems to slow down the whole process by a few seconds, but when you have a massive stream of people trying to get through it adds up.
Has anyone done the sums over whether it's better to pay cash for an oyster or be hit with fees on your credit card either on its own or linked to Android Pay, for overseas transactions? If, like some debit cards here you get hit with 2% to 3% fx fee plus a £2 handling fee, surely it would be better to pay in cash or in just 1 transaction and get an oyster card?