Visa contactless hits million-trips-a-day landmark in London

Visa TfL
EASY RIDERS: 25% of pay-as-you-go journeys on Transport for London are contactless

Visa cardholders made more than a million contactless journeys on London’s transport network on a single day in the lead up to Christmas, Visa Europe has revealed.

“In December alone, Visa Europe saw a 166% annual increase in the total number of journeys by people who used their Visa card to pay as they travelled, and a total spend for the year of £339m,” says Kevin Jenkins, regional managing director for the UK and Ireland at Visa Europe. “That’s 7x growth in total spend on the year.

“That’s just the beginning — next year, Visa will also support Transport for London’s (TfL) launch of contactless acceptance in London’s iconic black cabs. This will give black cabbies around the city a powerful tool to compete with ride-share companies.”

Success

“Contactless payments on TfL services has been a huge success,” says Shashi Verma, TfL’s director of customer experience. “A quarter of our pay-as-you-go customers use contactless payment already because it is so quick and easy and there have been more than 250m journeys made using cards from over 80 countries.”

Contactless travel could also be put in place on every bus in Britain by 2022 under a multi-million-pound plan unveiled earlier this week that is being developed by five major bus operators in the UK. The UK Cards Association has also announced plans to enable transport operators to implement contactless payments for bus and train journeys across the UK.

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