Lvivavtodor reminds us that when paying for fares with a bank card or NFC device, funds are not debited from the account immediately, but usually the next day or within a few days.
They explain that the automated fare collection system is based on deferred authorisation.
This is particularly important for the implementation of the connecting journeys functionality. Therefore, funds for all trips made during the day are withdrawn in one payment.
“The e-ticket system is based on deferred authorisation. That is why funds are debited from your account not on the same day you validated the fare, but on the next day or even later. From the moment you register your travel through the validator to the actual debiting of funds, there are many stages that remain behind the scenes, such as the transfer of accumulated validation data to the servers, a request from the e-ticket acquiring bank to your bank to debit funds, and finally the procedure for direct withdrawal of funds.
There are also cases when the cancellation of funds for previous trips coincides with the moment of validation. For example, a passenger validated one trip, and at that very moment, he or she was charged for two trips – 30 UAH. Often, passengers mistakenly believe that this was a charge for the trip they just made. However, this was a charge for successful validations that were made in the previous days.
We also receive requests from passengers who say that “they did not travel in transport today and yesterday, but the funds were withdrawn”. This means that they have been charged for successfully validated trips that they have made before.
We also record situations when passengers have insufficient funds on their account at the time of the fare debiting, in which case the withdrawal takes place after the card account is replenished. Repeated attempts to debit the account are made automatically at regular intervals.
So we emphasise once again: fares are not charged to the card instantly, but over the next day or later. One transaction is a write-off for all trips that were validated during the day with one carrier (physical card or gadget with Apple Pay/Google Pay support),” Lvivavtodor explained.
As a reminder, the controllers do not check the debiting of funds from cards, but rather the validation of the passenger’s trip. A green mark on the validator and a single beep are a confirmation of successful trip registration.
When paying in cash, the passenger must receive a one-time paper ticket from the driver. It must be kept until the end of the trip.