Visa Contactless London tube journeys breach 1m milestone in 24 hours for first time
London’s packed tube network has clocked up another milestone after the number contactless payment journeys surged to over a million for the first time ever in the run-up to Christmas as contactless debit cards and new systems such as Apple Pay become more commonplace.
The growing popularity of the swipe technology saw Visa rack up a 166 per cent annual increase in transactions in December alone as commuters coughed up a combined £339m to pay for 7.75m tube journeys over 2015.
Transport for London director of customer experience Shashi Verma said: “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 250 million journeys made using cards from over 80 countries. As more people update their cards and see the benefits of this quick and easy to use technology, we’re confident this number will increase even more."
London’s tube network was an early pioneer of contactless payment technology, introducing the system back in September 2014. Flushed with that success the system is now being rolled out to other forms of public transport including black cabs, trains and buses.