Transport for London to launch contactless payment system

Starting with this date, customers will be able to use contactless bank cards, or other contactless payment methods including phones, payment tags and wearables to pay on the Tube, the Overground, the DLR, London buses and certain National Rail services.

When customers choose to pay using a contactless method, they will not need to top up or buy weekly travel. Oyster cards will continue to still work.

In order to adapt TfL’s payment system to cope with contactless, a makeover has taken place. Whereas currently all of the payment processing takes place in the reader using the information stored on the card, the process has now been moved into the back office.

The payment system was built in conjunction with banks and Mastercard, Visa and American Express, and it is called the Transit Transaction System. The front end of the system is being maintained by Cubic, a systems and services company in transportation and defense markets worldwide.

The official launch follows a pilot involving nearly 3,000 participants and the launch of contactless payments across Londons buses in December 2012.