Oyster card top-up stores face £200 in extra charges

Nearly 4,000 London shops providing Trans­port for London’s (TfL) Oyster card top-ups face more than £200 in extra charges as a result of the 2025 switch-off of ana­logue phone lines, Better Retailing can reveal. In December 2025, all standard phone lines will stop working in the UK, with businesses and customers forced to move over to a broadband-based alternative.

However, Better Retailing under­stands the Oyster card terminals provided to partnered stores are not compatible with broad­band and instead rely on an analogue connection. Infrastructure project engineer for Network Pod, Neal Patel, has been help­ing local shops prepare for the change and warned that TfL have “nothing in place” for upgrading the terminals. Challenged by Better Retailing, TfL confirmed it “will not be issuing any new equipment”.

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Patel claimed Oyster Ticket Stop Shops will have to pay around £14.95 per month plus VAT for an additional digital line including an analogue telephone adapter (ATA) box. “Unless you are making more than double that in commission per month and can guarantee it for the next three years, it’s unlikely to make a return,” he warned.

With the 2% com­mission paid to stores, a retailer would have to sell an extra £897 of Oyster top-ups per month just to cover the cost of the extra phone line.

Stuck

Andrew Anderson, head of customer payments at TfL, said: “In prepara­tion for the change from analogue to digital phone lines, we have been work­ing with the major phone service providers to en­sure that there is a solu­tion for our Oyster Ticket Stop agents. The existing terminals will still work, but depending on the network provider, some retailers may require an additional bit of kit from their provider. Any retail­ers who are unsure should contact their phone service provider in the first instance, or contact their TfL agent, who will be able to advise them as required.”

TfL claimed that differ­ent broadband and phone providers will have “dif­ferent solutions” and that some have an ATA “inte­grated into their equip­ment already”. A spokes­person said it is working with those affected to make them aware of “the choices open to them”.

Fed London north-west branch member Bhagesh Shah said she had spoken to TfL about the problem after experiencing the issue when trying to change her store’s phone and broadband provider in 2023, forcing her to stay with her current provider for an extra year on an analogue line.

Fellow Fed north-west branch member Ravi Raveendran is in a similar situation, stuck paying for an extra phone line each month in order to keep the analogue Oyster machine operational.

Falling demand for Oyster top-ups in store is impeding the profit­ability of operating the extra line. Raveendran told Better Retailing: “Most people use their debit or credit cards to travel nowadays. It’s really only tourists, kids and elderly passengers that top-up in store.”

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