I'm having a bit of trouble interpreting your announcement and reconciling it with the way I thought contactless works.
My understanding is that the contactless backend does a pre-auth (= hold) on the card when it receives the first tap-on of the day. There are no further card transactions until after the Opal day is complete, at 4am. At that point the system does an authorisation (= charge) for the total of the previous day's fares (which I suppose extends/replaces the pre-auth). As far as I can see there are only 2 points in time when the card transaction can fail: after the initial tap on and after the final tap off of the day, so if the initial pre-auth succeeds there should be no issue with tapping on or off during the day.
Is my understanding correct so far?
If the 2nd auth fails your card will be placed on the hot list and subsequent tap-ons will fail until the debt is cleared. That's different from a default fare. I'm willing to accept that one or more default fares could result from a failed pre-auth because subsequent taps would then fail but its treatment might be consistent of that of a regular prepaid Opal with insufficient funds
I'm guessing the bank you are referring to does not allow the pre-auth to be extended by the subsequent auth. The one bank whose sweep facility I have some knowledge of, does not do on-demand sweeps for scheme debit transactions and only allows a single authorisation for these to be outstanding before the nightly sweep that adjusts balances. My guess is that the pre-auth does not trigger a sweep, so the final authorisation fails. I don't know whether that bank waits until the transaction is processed/settled(?) to do a sweep as card transactions display as pending authorisations with some institutions before they appear on a statement.
Are you criticising the bank's or TfNSW's system or the "entire user experience." The bank I am referring above states in their FAQ that on-demand sweeps do not apply to "Credit" transactions. It would be better of course if all banks allowed "Credit" transactions from their Savings accounts but in my opinion sweep functionality with some limitations is preferable to having to manually "sweep" funds.boxythingy wrote: ↑Tue Nov 16, 2021 3:54 pm For a "smart"card system, this occurrence is clumsy and non-user friendly.