NFC contactless payments on London bus journeys hit one million
Over one million journey on London buses have now been payed for using contactless NFC payment systems, Transport for London have today revealed.
The scheme, which launched four months ago and allows commuters to pay for single journeys by tapping an NFC-enabled credit card against an Oyster reader, attracts 10,000 users each day, with over 1,000 new cards being registered to use the service every week.
As the system remains more expensive to use than an Oyster card, it’s intended to only be used in situations when your Oyster isn’t handy or has run out of credit. As such, Oyster cards remain the most popular payment system on the TFL network by a significant margin.
Visa, Mastercard and American Express cards are all gradually being updated to support the new payment methods.
“Paying for a bus fare should be as easy as buying a sandwich,” said Shashi Verma, TfL’s Director of Customer Experience
“Enabling customers to use their contactless payment card on the buses removes the inconvenience of needing to top up an Oyster card or dig around for cash before making a journey. It is fantastic that we’ve already seen a million bus journeys made using a contactless payment cards and it’s a great sign that our customers are keen to benefit from this technology. We are now working hard to roll contactless payments out to the rest of the transport network.”
Scroll down for an infographic on London’s bus system and its contactless payment offering.
