There is no longer a deposit on an Oyster card. You pay a £10.50 card fee that you will not get back, and separately you can reclaim any pay as you go credit you have not used. If £10 or less is left on a standard Oyster card, a ticket machine at any Tube station will hand it back in a couple of minutes. Anything more, and any Visitor Oyster card, has to go through an account, a phone call or the post.
The confusion is almost entirely about the word "deposit". Older guidebooks, and a good many websites, still describe a £5 refundable deposit. That ended for new cards on 4 September 2022. Our review of the Visitor Oyster card explains which card is which, and Oyster against contactless covers the fares and caps. This page is about getting your money back at the end of the trip.
What you can and cannot reclaim
- The £10.50 card fee
- Not refundable on any card bought on or after 4 September 2022
- Cards bought before 23 February 2020
- The old £3 or £5 deposit is still refundable at a ticket machine
- Cards bought 23 February 2020 to 4 September 2022
- £5 was returned automatically as credit after one year, and had to be collected within six months
- Leftover pay as you go credit, £10 or less
- Any Tube station ticket machine; the card is then cancelled
- Leftover credit over £10
- Through a TfL online account
- Visitor Oyster card credit
- By phone on 0343 222 1234 (08:00 to 20:00, seven days) or by post
- Contactless card
- Nothing to reclaim; you were only ever charged for journeys
The deposit that no longer exists
Transport for London used to charge a refundable £5 deposit on an Oyster card. It then became a non-refundable fee, and the fee has since risen to £10.50. If you buy a card at a Tube station today, £10.50 of what you hand over buys the card itself and is gone. The rest is credit.
Three dates decide which rule applies to a card in your hand. A card bought before 23 February 2020 still carries a refundable deposit of £3 or £5, and you can claim it back at a ticket machine at Tube, London Overground and Elizabeth line stations. A card bought between 23 February 2020 and 4 September 2022 had its £5 returned automatically as pay as you go credit a year later, which had to be used within six months. A card bought on or after 4 September 2022 has a fee, not a deposit, and only the remaining credit can be refunded.
If you are returning to London with an old blue card from a previous trip, this matters. Try the deposit refund option at a machine before you assume there is nothing on it: the credit does not expire, and a card from 2018 may still be holding both a deposit and a few pounds.
Getting credit back at a ticket machine
This is the route almost every visitor needs, and it works only up to £10 and only on a standard Oyster card.
- Find a ticket machine at any Tube station. They are inside the barriers at some stations and outside at others, so look before you tap out for the last time.
- Put the card on the yellow pad on the machine.
- Choose the refund option on the screen, confirm the balance, and take the cash.
- Keep the card if you want a souvenir, but it is now cancelled and cannot be topped up again.
Two things surprise people. The machine cancels the card as part of the refund, so do not do it before your last journey. And the machine pays out in cash, which is worth knowing if you have carefully spent your last coins.
Do the refund at a station you are passing through anyway, not at the airport. The machines at Heathrow's Underground stations get long queues at the end of the day, and you want to be through the barrier, not in a queue behind eight other people doing the same thing. Refund at your local station on the morning you leave, then pay for the final airport ride with contactless.
More than £10 left, or already on the plane
Above £10, ticket machines will not help. You need a Transport for London online contactless and Oyster account, which you can create at any time, including after you have gone home. Sign in, add the card, and choose the option to apply for a product refund. TfL then pays the balance back to a bank card.
This is also the answer if you left London with credit on the card and did not think about it until later. There is no deadline on unused pay as you go credit, because it does not expire. You can equally keep the card for a future trip or give it to somebody else who is going.
Season tickets are a separate case. If you loaded a 7 Day or Monthly Travelcard onto an Oyster card and did not use it, TfL charges a £5 admin fee, calculates the refund from the day you contact them, and refuses the claim if fewer than three days remain on a 7 Day ticket or fewer than seven days on a monthly one. Our guide to Travelcards explains when a 7 Day ticket is worth buying in the first place.
Visitor Oyster cards work differently
A Visitor Oyster card cannot be refunded at a ticket machine. TfL handles it by phone or by post instead.
By phone, call 0343 222 1234, which is open 08:00 to 20:00 seven days a week. By post, send the card with your name, address, email address and phone number to TfL Customer Services, 9th Floor, 5 Endeavour Square, London E20 1JN. TfL then contacts you to arrange the payment.
For most visitors that is more trouble than a few pounds is worth, and the sensible move is to keep the card. The credit never expires, the card works on your next trip, and it can be lent to a friend who is visiting, as long as two people do not try to use it for the same journey. The one thing you cannot do is register a Visitor Oyster card, which means a lost card is lost money and also rules out adding a railcard discount to it.
When the fare was wrong: incomplete journey refunds
Forgetting to touch out is the most common way to lose money on London transport. The system cannot tell where you went, so it charges a maximum fare, and maximum fares do not count towards the daily cap. The same happens if a gate was left open, a reader failed, or your phone battery died at the barrier.
TfL refunds most of these automatically, which is why its first instruction is to wait. Give it at least 48 hours before you do anything. If nothing has appeared by then, you have up to eight weeks from the date of the journey to claim through your online account, choosing the incomplete journey refund option.
Two practical conditions. For a contactless card you must have registered the card online before you can claim; an unregistered contactless card is not eligible. And the money comes back differently depending on the card: on an Oyster card it is added the next time you touch in or out, which is no use once you have left London, while a contactless refund is paid as credit or transferred to the bank account.
Check your journey history before you leave London, not after. An Oyster refund is credited to the card itself on your next journey. If you are already home, that money sits on a card you are not using. Look at the last few days of journeys at a ticket machine or in your online account on your final morning, while you can still ride it off.
Why keeping the card is often the better answer
Before you queue for a refund, do the sum. If you are coming back to London within a few years, £4.70 of credit on a card in a drawer is worth more than £4.70 of coins you will exchange at a bad rate. The credit does not expire, and the card itself cost £10.50 that you cannot recover, so throwing it away is throwing away the fee twice over.
The argument goes the other way if you have a large balance, if you badly over-topped-up, or if you are certain you will not return. Our guide to money and cards in London covers exchange rates and what your bank may charge, and what a London trip costs puts the transport budget in context.
Spending the balance down instead
The neatest solution is to arrive at your last day with almost nothing left. A few habits make that easy.
- Top up in small amounts. £10 at a time, not £40. The machines take cards, and there is one at every station.
- Know your daily cap. Once you have hit it, further travel that day is free, so you do not need to hold credit for it. The caps are explained in our guide to London's travel zones.
- Use the bus. At £1.75 a journey, buses are the easiest way to burn a small balance, and the Hopper fare means a second bus within an hour costs nothing. See our guide to London's buses.
- Remember the one more journey rule. An Oyster card without enough credit can still make one more bus journey before it must be topped up, which is a useful safety net on a last morning.
- Pay for the airport run with contactless if the balance will not cover it, rather than topping up £20 for a £5.90 ride. Our comparisons of the two Heathrow trains and of every route from Heathrow give the fares.
Lost, stolen and broken cards
An unregistered Oyster card that is lost is simply gone, with the credit on it. A registered standard Oyster card can be cancelled and replaced, with the balance transferred, which is the main practical reason to register one. Visitor Oyster cards cannot be registered at all.
If a card stops working, a station member of staff can test it and issue a replacement. TfL's lost property office does not keep or take enquiries about individual Oyster cards or photocards, so there is no point searching for one there; our guide to lost property on London transport explains what the office does handle. For anything on the network itself, staff at the gate line are the fastest route to an answer, as our guide to the Underground explains.
Frequently asked questions
Can I get my £10.50 Oyster card fee back?
No. For any Oyster card bought on or after 4 September 2022, the £10.50 is a non-refundable fee rather than a deposit. Only the unused pay as you go credit can be refunded. Cards bought before 23 February 2020 still carry a refundable £3 or £5 deposit.
Where can I get my Oyster card refund at the airport?
Ticket machines at Heathrow's Underground and Elizabeth line stations can refund £10 or less on a standard Oyster card, but queues build up in the evening. It is faster to do it at a quieter station earlier in the day and to pay for the airport journey itself with a contactless card.
How do I get money back from a Visitor Oyster card?
Not at a ticket machine. Call TfL on 0343 222 1234 between 08:00 and 20:00, or post the card with your name, address, email and phone number to TfL Customer Services, 9th Floor, 5 Endeavour Square, London E20 1JN. For small balances, keeping the card for a future trip is usually simpler.
Does Oyster credit expire?
No. Pay as you go credit on an Oyster card stays on it indefinitely, so a card from an earlier trip will still work when you come back. It can also be lent to someone else, though two people cannot use one card for the same journey.
What happens if I forget to touch out on the Tube?
You are charged a maximum fare, and that fare does not count towards your daily cap. TfL refunds most of these automatically, so wait at least 48 hours. If nothing appears, claim an incomplete journey refund through your online account within eight weeks of the journey.
Sources
- Transport for London - Apply for unused credit or ticket refund (checked September 2026)
- Transport for London - Apply for an incomplete journey refund (checked September 2026)
- Transport for London - Where to buy tickets and Oyster (checked September 2026)
- Transport for London - Visitor Oyster card (checked September 2026)
- Transport for London - Bus and tram fares and the Hopper fare (checked September 2026)