Ok train ticket to watford booked and everything ready to be collected from a machine from the station.
The question is do i really need a UK card or does any CC or debit card will work?
Southern train website is unclear and I have yet to receive answer from their customer services.

So again any help would be gladly appreciated.

My in laws have collected tickets from a southern machine before and I don’t believe they have any UK bank accounts

Ideally, just go to an actual person at an actual ticket office and read them your ticket collection reference number.

They issue you the ticket, without any card at all.

Good luck finding a person and a ticket office though.

That said, you can collect at any time, from any station, not just departure station on day of departure.

As long as your card has a chip on it you should be ok for a machine collection. Some of our American visitors fall foul of this as chips are not standard across the banks there yet.