SWR Smartcard Terms & Conditions

Touch Smartcard Terms and Conditions

• The following terms and conditions apply to your Touch Smartcard.
• We issued your smartcard free of charge. We own your smartcard and can withdraw it at any time.
• A member of staff may ask to check your smartcard at any time and you must show it to them if they do.
• Your smartcard is not transferable, and you must not allow anyone else to use it. If anyone else uses your card, they may be prosecuted or have to pay a penalty fare.
• You can cancel your smartcard if you no longer need it.
• If you have a Season Ticket loaded onto your smartcard, you will need to show a photocard to prove your identity. You can get a National Rail photocard free of charge from any National Rail ticket office. You will need your photocard number and your postcode when buying a Season Ticket from a self-service ticket machine. If you are travelling with a daily single or return ticket loaded onto your smartcard, you can use any photo ID if the name matches the name on your smartcard.
• The National Rail Conditions of Travel and the railway byelaws apply to any ticket you have on your smartcard. For more details and a copy of the National Rail Conditions of Travel and the railway byelaws, please visit southwesternrailway.com. If you think you are entitled to a refund in connection with a ticket you have stored on your smartcard, you must arrange this through our Customer Service Centre (our normal refund rules, which are in line with the National Rail Conditions of Travel, apply).
• If you have an Annual Season Ticket (also known as a Gold Card) on your smartcard and your starting or destination station is in the Gold Card area, we will issue your Gold Card record separately. (Please see our website for a map of the Gold Card area.) The Gold Card record contains the relevant information about your Season Ticket that you will need to get extra discounted tickets for you and other people travelling with you for all journeys across the Gold Card area. You must give the Gold Card record up if you no longer need the Season Ticket. For more information about Annual Season Tickets, visit the National Rail website at nationalrail.co.uk.
• Before getting on a train, you must load your ticket onto your smartcard. The ticket must be valid for the train you intend to travel on and for the journey you intend to make. You cannot load tickets onto your smartcard on the train. If you do not load a valid ticket onto your smartcard before you get on the train, you may have to pay the full single or return fare or a penalty fare, or you could be prosecuted.
• At the start and end of every journey, you must hold your smartcard on the reader at the automatic ticket gate or, if there are no automatic gates, on the smartcard reader on the platform. The reader will make a bleep sound and show a green light when it has read your card properly.
• If you lose your smartcard or it is stolen, you must report it to our Smart Support team by calling 0345 6000 650 as soon as possible. We will cancel your smartcard to prevent anyone else from using it. This will normally take up to 24 hours. You will be liable for any unauthorised use of your smartcard until you contact us to cancel it. We cannot prevent anyone from using your smartcard until you have reported it lost or stolen.
• Once you have cancelled your smartcard you cannot reactivate it. We will ask you to confirm your details before we cancel your card and send you a replacement. You may have to pay a fee to replace any tickets that were loaded onto the card.
• If your smartcard is faulty please visit one of our ticket offices where it can be replaced, or call our customer service team on 0345 6000 650. We will replace it, and any valid South Western Railway tickets that were loaded onto it, free of charge. If we reasonably believe you (or someone else) have deliberately damaged or misused your smartcard, we may charge an administration fee to replace it. If we believe your card has been tampered with in any way, we may withdraw it without refunding the value of any tickets stored on it.
• We have the right to refuse to replace your smartcard.

Data protection and making sure your payments are secure

• We take your privacy very seriously. We will not give your information to anyone outside our organisation unless we have to do so by law. We process and store personal information in line with the latest Data Protection Act. You can read our full data protection policy at southwesternrailway.com. For smartcards, the information we hold about you includes your title (Mr, Mrs, Ms, Miss and so on), first name and surname, address, phone number, email address and date of birth.
• Our system will record the location, date and time you use your Touch Smartcard. We will never give specific details about your journeys to anyone other than you, unless we have to do this by law.
• We have taken many steps to make sure the payments you make are secure, including using the recognised payment industry standards. We do not hold any information about your financial transactions other than details of the products you have bought and when and where you bought them.
• We will only use information that you have given us for administration purposes (including to develop and maintain our systems), customer service, our own research, and to detect and prevent crime.
• If you have ticked the relevant box on the application form, you agree that we can also contact you to keep you up to date with information about our services, such as changes to our timetables and fares, and to tell you about special offers and our other related products and services. If you have told us you are willing to accept emails from us, we will send you emails to the email address you have provided. You can change your mind and tell us you no longer want to receive emails from us by clicking the ‘unsubscribe’ link at the bottom of one of our emails or by contacting our Customer Service Centre.