Andrew Anderson has worked in public transport and ticketing systems for over 30 years. Starting as Stagecoach Group's very first graduate trainee, he has worked for both operators and suppliers before joining Transport for London in 2003. Andrew was a key member of TfL's Future Ticketing Project team, which delivered contactless payment acceptance, with accountability for the business and customer requirements and stakeholder management.  Since then, he has been responsible for sponsoring a range of projects in the ticketing and payments environment including the ticketing changes to enable Night Tube, enhancing the customer experience of Oyster through digital channels and has led the delivery of several new ticketing projects and initiatives which have been pivotal in Oyster's evolution, the development of the Oyster photocard for child free travel concessionary schemes and the expansion of pay as you go to National Rail and Crossrail (Elizabeth Line) services in and around London and the introduction of weekly capping for Oyster customers.  In his current role, Andrew has overall responsibility for delivering the Mayor of London’s fares policies for London and the operation of TfL’s revenue collection system, which collects over £5bn annually.  As well as managing the revenue collection contract and system, this also includes responsibility for TfL’s engagement with the payments industry and partner organisations including the Department for Transport, the Rail Delivery Group and Great British Rail on all matters relating to revenue collection.

• Q1: As the Head of Customer Payments at TfL, what have been some of the most significant challenges you’ve faced in modernizing the payment systems for such a vast and complex transport network? 

The London fare collection environment is a complex one with a lot of interfacing systems and interdependencies.  It appears simple on the outside, but there are a myriad of complexities with touchpoints across our business functions and beyond.  For example, our concessionary pass issuing system has to talk to the Oyster system to ensure that the right concession data is loaded to each card; our bus system talks to our iBus system, which provides our Automatic Vehicle Location system and more, for context data such as location information to help with planning; and we are integrated with the National Rail network, so we need to support not only their tickets (for example to transit across London), but we need to ensure that our reader in train operator gates in London supports what the train operators need to do.  This range of complexities mean that no change is easy – all the interdependencies need to be tested.  And we need to manage our change programme to avoid conflict between high priority changes, procurements which result in change freezes to support contract transition and upgrades some of which are contractual obligations

• Q2: Contactless payments have been widely successful at TfL. What lessons have you learned from implementing this system and how do you see the future of contactless and digital payments evolving in public transport globally? 

One of the key lessons is that we’re not as in control of our own destiny as we used to be.  Adopting open standards and technologies comes with a requirement to stay up to date – whether that’s keeping apps aligned with the latest operating system releases or maintaining compliance with security standards and payment scheme rules.  They all require an investment profile to keep up to date, even if not innovating.  We’ve learned that we need to ensure we factor this in to our development roadmap and our budget submissions. 

Going forward, I would like to see contactless and digital payments evolving to recognise that #transitisnotretail.  We are generally public organisations and have to consider carefully how we spend our funds.  Even in London, where our operating costs are covered by our revenue, we still spend public money on capital investment.  We have to be able to justify what we’re spending on.  I would like to see the payments industry evolve to recognise this dimension, because it drives our thinking and behaviour.  In an environment where pricing is a decision made by politicians; we are not able to flex as quickly as commercial entities.  Therefore, I would like to see the payments industry recognise that we need time and notice to plan change, whether technical, or in the tariffs we are charged. 

The other thing that needs to be understood is that, again because #transitisnotretail, we don’t have the same incentives as other businesses.  We’re not fighting overtly to be “top of wallet” or have the most streamlined customer payment experience or stand out from the crowd.  We are effectively a monopoly provider to enable people to get to where they want to be.  Our driver is to have the most cost-effective way for customers to pay for travel and to minimise queuing in stations and boarding times on buses.  So any solution that either comes with high tariffs or is only attractive to a section of our user base (remember that a significant minority still use cash), will not be attractive to us.

• Q3: Data security and privacy are major concerns in the digital payments landscape. How does TfL balance innovation in payment technology with the responsibility to protect customer data and prevent fraud? 

Our approach tends to be one of caution, which can result in us being slow to change and adopt innovation.  Anything we do will only be launched slowly and incrementally to ensure that it works well.  We also require extensive testing.  Compliance with both standards and industry best practice is important too.  Where our ability to collect revenue, or the need to protect customer data is concerned, failing fast is not an option – everything must be thoroughly proven and tested before we expose it to customers.

• Q4: Looking ahead, what innovations in fare collection and payment systems are you most excited about and how do you think they will transform the future of public transportation, both at TfL and globally? 

It’s clear that many of our customers expect us to develop and enhance the digital experience – over half of contactless payments are made with mobile devices.  So, we need to do more in this space to live up to expectations.  We’re part way through a transition which started over 10 years ago with contactless.  The opportunity now is to consolidate systems and start to retire legacy technology to simplify our technical landscape.  Achieving that isn’t glamorous, but it’s necessary, and it is the hardest part of any transformation.  This means that I’m looking forward to a time when we can retire magnetic tickets and when we have a single operating system for pay as you go (we have two currently – one for Oyster and one for contactless).

• Q5: What topics will you be covering in your presentation at Transport Ticketing Global 2025? 

I hope to share TfL’s experiences in learning to work with external industries.  One of the key themes I will be exploring will be the question of accountability in a complex ecosystem.