TfL Ref: FOI-0132-2122 Thank you for your request of 15th April 2021 asking for information about Oyster card sales. Your request has been considered in accordance with the requirements of the Freedom of Information Act and our information access policy. Specifically you asked: “How many Oyster cards are you selling in a non pandemic year? (2017-2018) How many of them are still valid and how many were refunded? How many Visitor Oyster cards are you selling in a similar period? How many of them are still valid and how many were refunded? Is the same refund policy for them?” I can confirm that we hold some of the information you require. 8,711,597 Oyster cards were issued from 1 April 2017 to 31 March 2018. No changes have been made to the refund policy on deposits paid for these cards - the deposit is refunded when a card is no longer needed. 7,745,684 of these cards are still valid. 965,913 cards are no longer valid because they have been refunded on a ticket machine or added to the hotlist, including where a refund request has been made online. Visitor cards are pre-loaded with pay as you go credit and sold to our Visitor card partners in bulk. We have no visibility of numbers sold to individual customers thereafter and therefore it is not possible to provide figures in the same way as for standard Oyster cards. From 1 April 2017 to 31 March 2018, we sold 918,840 Visitor Oyster cards to our partners but do not have any data on how many of these cards were sold on to customers or refunded within this timeframe. The fee paid for a Visitor Oyster card is not refundable. The refund policy on fees paid for these cards has not changed since Visitor Oyster cards were introduced in 2007. Note further that the £5 payable for an Oyster card issued from 23 February 2020 onwards is no longer refunded when a card is no longer needed. If the card is still in use after a year, the £5 is refunded as a pay as you go top up, on the anniversary of the date the card was issued. The pay as you go top up is available for collection for six months, when the customer makes a journey. If this is not the information you are looking for please do not hesitate to contact me. If you are considering submitting a further FOI request please think carefully about whether the request is essential at this current time, as answering FOI requests will require the use of limited resources and the attention of staff who could be supporting other essential activity. Where requests are made, please note that our response time may be impacted by the current situation. Please see the attached information sheet for details of your right to appeal as well as information on copyright and what to do if you would like to re-use any of the information we have disclosed. Yours sincerely, David Wells FOI Case Officer FOI Case Management Team General Counsel Transport for London