Rollout across entire London network boosts the technology’s use on buses
More than one million journeys have been made using contactless payment cards and devices in the first week since Transport for London (TfL) launched the payment method for all public transport in London on September 16.
Contactless payments have been available on the bus network since December 2012. Since contactless payments launched across the entire transport network in London on September 16 there has been a significant rise in bus journeys using contactless payment, with the highest being 100,000 journeys in a day. The number of journeys on London Buses and Trams in the first week since contactless payments launched is over 785,000.
In the first week of the launch there were over 250,000 instances per day of customers touching a contactless payment card or device on readers across transport in London. This brings the total number of times customers have touched in or out on the payment readers to 1.6m.
Contactless payments are now making up nearly 5% of all pay as you go journeys on the network.
Shashi Verma, TfL’s Director of Customer Experience, said: “It is really encouraging to see over one million contactless journeys on transport across London in the first week. We want travelling in London to be as easy and convenient for our customers as possible and contactless is one of the steps we have taken to make that happen.”
Card clash is being closely monitored and customers are being refunded when they may have accidentally touched more than one card on a reader and paid with a card they did not intend to use. On average there have been around 1,700 instances each weekday where customers may have accidentally paid with a contactless payment card they did not intend to pay with and all of these are being automatically refunded by TfL. This figure compares with a pre-launch estimate of around 2,000.
Oyster will continue to be available, with contactless payments being another option that lets customers travel without the need to top up Oyster credit. The next part of TfL’s plans to revolutionise ticketing concentrate on how the benefits of contactless can be brought to Oyster, to ensure all customers experience the same convenience.
