Dublin Bus contactless payment could be up and running very soon

Dublin Bus customers may be able to pay for their journeys with their contactless bank cards, smartphones, smart watches and QR codes by next year.

The National Transport Authority has launched a tendering process for the system and depending on the results of that process, it could be in place by late 2023.

The Oireachtas Transport Committee met with stakeholders yesterday to discuss the NTA’s Draft Transport Strategy for the Greater Dublin Area.

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Dublin Bus CEO Ray Coyne appeared before the Committee and confirmed that the tendering process for the “next generation ticket” system had begun.

He explained: “It depends what the NTA request but you can pay with your bank card, Garmin Pay, Apple Watch, it could be your phone.

“It dynamically updates so if you just did one journey and it’s a €1 fare it will charge you €1 , if you did 20 journeys and it’s going to be €2 or whatever it’ll charge you that after the event.

“It will always give you the cheapest fare.

“They’ve started the tender process so that’s commenced. 2023-24 you’ll see it rolled out on buses.”

Mr Coyne also said that any plan to make public transport completely cashless would be a Government decision.

He said: “Tipping to 90% cashless, which is great. It will be a Government, political decision to go cashless and that’s what we see in other jurisdictions.

“You might get it down to 2% through heavily discounting cashless and ramping up, that then becomes a political decision.

“Some people don’t have the money to have credit on a Leap Card and they only might do a journey twice a year or something.

“You’re essentially in the zone where, fairly quickly that decision would need to be made if that was the aspiration to go cashless.”

Mr Coyne said making Dublin Bus cashless would not save them a “significant” amount of money.

“It would save money but you’d still have to give every customer on the bus a ticket so proof of travel, you need to know what your loading is so you still have to do that.

“But what it would save is, you don’t have to collect cash and bring it to a bank. there’s bank charges there and some staff things.

“But I wouldn’t be coming to Government saying ‘look, you’ll save a whole chunk of change if you go cashless’.”

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