Contactless expands

Featured in the Future Transport London Newsletter July 2026

By Dick Dunmore

In 2003, Transport for London introduced a Contactless alternative to magnetic ticket readers and optical scanners. Instead, yellow electronic ticket readers transmit a Near Field Communication (NFC) signal powerful enough to charge and operate a circuit on chipped card at a distance of up to 40 millimetres. Passengers buy and use Oyster cards, which can store a Travelcard, a pass such as a Freedom Pass, a discount such as a Railcard, or cash which can be debited after each journey.

From 2012, the need for an Oyster card was removed for those paying the full adult fare. Passengers use their existing credit and debit cards to give the ticket reader the details of the account from which the fare would be paid. From 2015, cards were joined by NFC-equipped smartphones passing the account details via Apple or Google Pay.

By 2022, over 70 per cent of Pay-As-You-Go journeys on public transport in and around London were paid by Contactless, with daily caps cheaper than a paper one day Travelcard.

On 8^th March 2026 came the good news that Contactless had been extended to 20 more stations on the Greater Anglia network, and finally covered all six airports, scattered up to 50 kilometres from its centre. This ended the estimated 16,000 incidents a year in which travellers to Stansted were fined for trying to pay with Contactless or Oyster.

Gateline at Piccadilly

At these stations, people travelling into London can see on the updated ‘London & the South East’ map that they can use Contactless and do not need to buy a ticket. Even if they try to do so, many ticket machines will remind them that Contactless can be used for their journey.

At Transport for London stations, in contrast, people travelling out of London may see maps of ‘Tube’ and ‘Rail & Tube’ but not of the whole Contactless area. Many do not realise how far it extends, and needlessly break a tube to rail journey to buy a paper ticket.

In principle, Transport for London could display the ‘London & the South East’ map outside stations, but many people would need to find their destination first on the key and then on the map to see if it had a Contactless symbol. It would be easier if the ‘Rail and Tube’ map also had an alphabetic list of ‘National Rail stations at which Contactless can be used’. Major stations could be highlighted, and airports could be accompanied by an aircraft symbol.

Online, neither Transport for London nor National Rail provides a simple list of where Contactless can be used. Instead, Transport for London lists single fares (https://tfl.gov.uk/fares/find-fares/single-fare-finder) and National Rail lists daily and weekly caps for unlimited travel between each station and anywhere in London (https://www.nationalrail.co.uk/tickets-railcards-and-offers/buying-a-ticket/pay-as-you-go-with-Contactless/pay-as-you-go-with-Contactless-caps/). Weekly caps are normally identical to the existing Weekly Travelcard including Zones 1-6, although at some stations it is possible to make some peak journeys but still benefit from the off-peak cap.

Passengers do not naturally want to buy a ticket hoping that it is valid for their journey and, if necessary, refundable. They would rather make a journey first and pay the minimum necessary afterwards. For relatively short and cheap trips in and around urban areas, where at any one time there is only one fare for a journey, Contactless lets them do exactly that.

Transport operators do not naturally want to operate expensive ticket offices and machines. It is much easier for them to record a debit or credit card number, and the journey start and end points, calculate the fare and charge it through the banking system.

The current Contactless arrangements are not perfect: the Contactless fare is not yet always the cheapest, and it cannot yet handle child or railcard discounts, or where the passenger already holds a pass or ticket covering part of the journey. Over time, however, it should be possible to address these issues.

What next?

Transport for London is considering replacing magnetic readers at ticket barriers with optical readers of the national system of QR-like Aztec codes (which have squares in the centre). This would mean that:

·       All travel within the Contactless area can already be Pay-As-You-Go read by NFC.

·       Any travel across the Contactless boundary could use Aztec codes read optically.

·       Any residual need for ‘paper’ tickets could be met with Aztec codes printed on 

·        paper.

The Department for Transport has plans for trials of railcard validation. Passengers will enter details of their railcard before buying tickets, to ensure both that they are offered discounts to which they are entitled and that they cannot claim discounts to which they are not entitled.Such technologies are also well established in other countries.

In Japan, apps such as Pasmo sit in an Apple or Google Wallet and can list every touch in and touch out – one benefit is that you can check at any time whether you are ‘in’ or ‘out’ – and the fare charged.

These technologies could be combined to integrate details of a passenger’s Travelcards and passes, Railcards and any pre-purchased tickets with their payment method. After each day’s travel, the system would automatically charge only the remaining fares payable, with the details available on the web or in an app.

Barrier-free travel?

Unlike pre-paid tickets, Contactless Pay-As-You-Go requires that passengers record the start and end of their journey on yellow readers when entering and leaving the ‘paid’ area. In some cases, they must also touch pink card readers at interchanges (the single fare finder explains where), to show that they have used a cheaper route avoiding Zone 1.

The need for ticket readers to identify the start, end, and route of journeys can be eliminated if passengers volunteer to share their location data with the transport provider. The Department of Transport is carrying out trials of the FAIRTIQ technology developed in Switzerland and used widely in the European Union. Passengers open an app when travelling, and the system correlates their location data with transport services to identify what journeys they have made. As in Japan, details of journeys and fares charged, which can include capping and Railcards, can all be checked in the app.

For transport operators, barrier-free travel saves the cost of installing, powering, supervising and maintaining fixed equipment such as gates and readers (Waterloo has 171 gates, and Liverpool Street removed five catering outlets to expand the gateline to 57). For passengers, including Passengers with Reduced Mobility (PRM), or with buggies or luggage, it speeds and simplifies movement through the station.

In the longer term, stations may be more open and less cluttered, with none of ticket offices, ticket machines or ticket barriers. We will turn up and travel, confident that we will later be charged the lowest fare, except on longer journeys where there are cheaper advance purchase fares. Operators will protect their revenue by checking that debit and credit cards and location-based apps are ‘touched in’, and by scanning Aztec tickets.

Dick Dunmore