IIRC the big push to contactless and Oyster before it is just reducing the cost of handling money. Transit agencies do not really want to be in the business of

IIRC the big push to contactless and Oyster before it is just reducing the cost of handling money. Transit agencies do not really want to be in the business of banking, and physically printing paper tickets and maintaining the machines to accept them properly is a lot more expensive than an RFID reader. In particular for paper and magnetic strip, you have to keep the reader clean enough to accept reads properly, and the machine also needs to not damage the ticket. This is a non issue with tapping.