This is how the London Underground works now. Used to require an Oyster card but has worked with contactless cards for a good few years at this point.
The daily or weekly pay-as-you-go capping also can't be combined with rail tickets beyond the TfL/Oyster zones (whereas a travelcard can, even if it's on Oyster), and if you're a transit nerd, the maximum journey times allowed with pay-as-you-go can occasionally be annoying.
Having said that, I do concede that contactless payment is pretty neat, and I did make use of it, too, if I was staying less than a week in London, but all in all I'd still be a bit unhappy if e.g. the weekly travelcards were simply discontinued.