Additional payment methods delivering more choice and easier travel for customers
Millions also already benefitting from contactless bus travel as part of UK roll-out
Scotland, UK, 2017-Sep-03 — /Travel PR News/ — Stagecoach is delivering even more convenient bus travel for passengers across the country with the addition of Apple Pay and Android Pay through the Stagecoach Bus smartphone app.
The new payment methods will make it even easier for customers to buy their Stagecoach tickets through the app.
The Stagecoach Bus app – which was launched last year and has been downloaded by hundreds of thousands of passengers – enables people to buy and download day and weekly bus tickets straight to their mobile phone. Payments via the app can also be made by PayPal or via debit or credit card.
The app also provides customers with journey planning, next-stop information and live bus tracking to make their journeys even smoother. It is available free of charge for Apple and Android devices.
The latest update to the app also includes a card scanner feature which customers can use when adding a new payment method at ‘Secure checkout’ using a debit/credit card.
Customers can also use fingerprint recognition to confirm their password when making purchases within the Stagecoach Bus App.
The addition of Apple Pay and Android Pay through the app complements the existing suite of payment options offered by Stagecoach which includes traditional cash payments and StagecoachSmart ticketing.
Stagecoach is also currently delivering the first major deployment of contactless technology on Britain’s buses outside London which will benefit customers across England, Scotland and Wales. Stagecoach has added Scottish Citylink to an expanded national roll-out programme which will see the technology installed on all of the company’s 8,500 buses across the UK by early 2019.
To date, seven Stagecoach companies – with a combined fleet of more than 3,000 buses and 360million customer journeys a year – now offer customers the convenient payment technology.
The £12million programme, which was launched last October, allows passengers to pay for their travel with a contactless credit or debit card, as well as Apple Pay and Android Pay.
Contactless payments are now available at Stagecoach Manchester & Wigan, Stagecoach Merseyside and South Lancashire, Stagecoach North East, Stagecoach Oxfordshire, Stagecoach South East, Stagecoach South and Stagecoach Yorkshire.
Stagecoach UK Bus Managing Director for England and Wales, Mark Threapleton said: “This latest development is another example of ways we are making travel easier and more convenient for our customers. We know our passengers want simple, quick transactions and reliable information about their services and we are investing heavily in the technology to deliver that.
“Our staff also work hard every single day to deliver high-quality, reliable services but we are up against growing traffic congestion in towns and cities across the UK. Our passengers urgently need politicians to tackle this issue and help bus networks flourish.”
Stagecoach is also working with other major bus operators – First Bus, Go-Ahead, Arriva and National Express – on a major project to have EMV contactless technology installed on every one of the UK’s 32,000-plus buses outside London. The project would cover more than 1,200 bus operators in England, Scotland and Wales, and make contactless travel available for 5.2 billion bus passenger journeys a year across Britain. Associated government legislation would be needed to ensure contactless ticketing was offered by all individual bus operators.
Last year, major operators completed the introduction of smart multi-operator bus ticketing in all nine of England’s smart city regions with support from local transport authorities. Passengers can travel seamlessly between operators in Greater Manchester, Merseyside, Tyne and Wear, West Midlands, South and West Yorkshire, as well as Nottingham, Leicester and Bristol, making public transport more accessible in regions which account for around 15 million people – over a quarter of England’s population.
A similar project is now underway to deliver the same benefits to Scotland’s major cities. Multi-operator schemes are already live in Aberdeen and Dundee, with Glasgow and Edinburgh to follow.
Smart ticketing is available at all Stagecoach regional companies with more than two million StagecoachSmart cards in circulation and more than 330million smart transactions every year.
Further information about Stagecoach UK Bus can be found at www.stagecoachbus.com
Stagecoach Group
- Stagecoach Group is an international public transport group, with extensive operations in the UK, the United States and Canada. The Group employs around 40,000 people, and operates around 13,000 buses, coaches, trains and trams.
- Stagecoach is one of the UK’s biggest bus and coach operators with around 8,500 buses and coaches on a network stretching from south-west England to the Highlands and Islands of Scotland. Low-cost coach service, megabus.com, operates a network of inter-city services across the UK.
- Stagecoach operates the East Midlands Trains network. It has a 49% shareholding in Virgin Rail Group, which operates the West Coast rail franchise. It also has a 90% shareholding in Virgin Trains East Coast, which operates the East Coast rail franchise.
- Stagecoach operates the Supertram light rail network in Sheffield.
- In North America, Stagecoach operates around 2,300 buses and coaches in the United States and Canada. megabus.com links around 130 key locations in North America. Stagecoach is also involved in operating commuter, transit, contracted, charter, airport shuttle and sightseeing services.
SOURCE: Stagecoach Group
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