Passengers travelling on Translink’s Metro bus services in Belfast are the first in Northern Ireland to be able to pay a flat fare for their journeys with a tap of their contactless bank card and benefit from daily fare-capping using the public transport operator’s contactless account-based ticketing system.

Translink has begun rolling out its interoperable Future Ticketing System on 270 Metro buses before extending it to more than 1,000 Ulsterbus and Goldliner vehicles and adding support for tap-on-tap-off fare payments on Metro, Glider, Ulsterbus and NI Railways services across the whole of Northern Ireland.

“Passengers tapping their bank cards on-and-off ticketing validators will benefit from the best correct fare without having to buy a ticket in advance or navigate the fares structure,” Sustainable Bus reports.

“The CloudFare back office will automatically work out the best available fare for the journey, irrespective of the mode of travel or the number of legs.”

“In time, the new contactless ticketing architecture will provide integrated and seamless multimodal travel for citizens across Northern Ireland, creating the UK’s largest multimodal account-based ticketing system outside London,” the publication adds.

Translink announced in July 2021 that it was planning to launch a national interoperable fare-capped contactless ticketing system.

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