Contactless bank cards to be accepted on tube network

TfL says cards will be accepted on Underground, Overground and DLR services from September 16

Contactless bank cards are to be accepted across London's tube network from September 16, Transport for London (TfL) has revealed.

The move will enable pay-as-you-go customers to tap in and out of stations using their bank cards without having to top up their Oyster cards. The payments will be made directly from the card.

For those users who are making several journeys, there will be a daily cap, just as there currently is on Oyster cards.

There will also be a Monday to Sunday cap, which TfL says will mean that customers will get the "best value contactless fare over the course of the week".

TfL said that contactless payments have operated on the capital's bus network since December 2012, and have been used by around 825,000 customers for 17 million journeys. In total, around 65,000 journeys a day are being made using a contactless payment card, it said.

The September roll-out comes after a successful pilot of the contactless system on the London Underground and rail network in April which involved around 3,000 customers.

All UK-issued contactless cards from the likes of Mastercard, Visa and American Express will be compatable with the new service.

Transport for London's CIO Steve Townsend recently told Computing that the organisation is using Tibco's services to bring together data feeds such as those from Oyster and contactless payments, as well as other internal data sources in order to provide a better service for customers.