More than 3 mil. London journeys made using a mobile device in second half of 2015

More than a quarter of London ‘pay as you go’ new figures from Transport for London (TfL) reveal. The company says that more than 3.2m journeys across London’s transport network were made using mobile devices in the second half of 2015, and over 35,000 journeys a day are now being made using a mobile device.

The share of mobile devices in overall contactless use has also been growing, standing at approximately 3.5% in December, TfL’s Commissioner’s Report for February reveals.

“Apple Pay’s launch in July saw a flurry of new mobile devices used on our system, followed by later spikes as issuing banks were added to the Apple Pay system,” the transport organisation says. “Overall, the growth of new devices has stabilised and is similar to that for cards.”

The proportion of contactless journeys made also continues to increase each week, the report shows, and has now reached 26.6% for Tube and rail journeys and 23% for bus journeys, with nearly 25,000 new cards being used every day. Overall, 9m contactless cards from 80 countries have been used to pay for journeys across the capital city.

Shashi Verma, Director of Customer Experience at TfL, said: ‘More than 300 million journeys have been made using contactless cards from over 80 countries and 27% of pay as you go customers on the Tube and rail now use contactless payment because it is so quick and easy.

‘We are committed to making paying for transport easier for everyone and are working to further expand the benefits to journeys to all London airports as well as other key locations around the commuter belt.’

Richard Koch, Head of Policy at The UK Cards Association said: ‘One in ten card transactions in the UK are now contactless, and for many Londoners it has become the way they expect to pay for travel too.

‘Building on the huge success in London, we’re now working with the transport industry to bring in contactless payments across the country and help make public transport more convenient for millions of passengers.’

Contactless payments have been accepted on London Buses since December 2012, with the technology expanded to cover Tube, tram, DLR, London Overground, and most National Rail services in London in September 2014.

The new figures show that across London:
•More than 300 million journeys have been made using this technology since its launch in 2012, with more than a million journeys now made each day using Contactless
•Nearly 25,000 new cards are used on the network every day, with 27% of all pay as you go journeys on Tube and rail services now made using Contactless
•Customers are now also using other methods of payment, such as mobile device ticketing technology. Around 3.5% of all contactless journeys are now made using mobile technology, with around an extra 7,000 devices now seen on average every week
•Since July 2015, more than 3.2 million journeys have been made using mobile devices on London’s transport network. This is predicted to further increase throughout 2016 as more devices come onto the market and more people adopt them and other Contactless technologies such as watches and wristbands with Near Field Communication (NFC) capabilities

The use of contactless cards reached a daily peak of 1.7m in the run up to Christmas and, since contactless technology made its launch across the transport system in September 2014, more than 300m journeys have been made using contactless cards.

Janet Cooke, Chief Executive, London TravelWatch, said: ‘For many passengers Contactless payment cards are the easiest and most convenient way to pay for travel as these figures confirm.

‘For some time, passengers in towns such as Epsom, Slough, and Sevenoaks have been calling for the benefits of Oyster and Contactless payments to be extended to them. This should now be done without further delay.’

Source: tfl.gov.uk