Paying contactless for weekly tickets - withdrawn in South Yorkshire

[ALEMASTER]

South Yorkshire Travelmaster will no longer be allowing weekly tickets to be purchased on board buses using contactless, only cash, due to the amount of fraud where customers are getting tickets but the bank declining the payment. Tickets still available to buy using card online, at self service vending machines and from tram conductors. The train inclusive SY Connect+ and Getabout+ also remain available to buy from staffed ticket offices at railway stations.

Announcement >> https://www.sytravelmaster.com/post/changes-to-7-day-on-board-bus-payments

From 30 July 2023, some TravelMaster 7-Day tickets are cash-only on-board buses in South Yorkshire.


Due to fraud concerns, contactless payments (including card and Google/Apple pay) will no longer be accepted for some 7-Day tickets bought on-board buses. This change is not one to be taken lightly and is a necessary step to protect against fraud. We've worked closely with bus operators and South Yorkshire Police to combat this fraud, however, further steps must be taken to protect ourselves and our partner operators. This change has been implemented on all bus operators in South Yorkshire.


7-Day tickets continue to be available for contactless payments when buying from the below locations.

Travelmaster is the range of tickets accepted by all operators.

 

[Simon75]

There was a similar thread which Ensign had similar problems

 

[mikeg]

Surely this would be solved by the ticket machine authorising for the full amount rather than 10p? After all the amount in this case is already known. It's not like TOTO where it's yet to be determined.

 

[johncrossley]

Selling weekly tickets on the bus is crazy anyway. One of the main points of selling season tickets is to cut down on driver transactions. Better to use weekly capping using smartcards or contactless bank cards or apps.

 

[JGurney]

Selling weekly tickets on the bus is crazy anyway. One of the main points of selling season tickets is to cut down on driver transactions. Better to use weekly capping using smartcards or contactless bank cards or apps.

It still cuts down the number of driver transactions to one per week per customer. The advantage of selling on the bus is the simplicity and accessibility. Not everyone has bank accounts or mobile 'phones, and a system of smartcards means the costs of producing them. There is also in some areas the holidaymaker issue. Someone staying in an place for a week may well want a weekly ticket but not being local have no idea that a local bus smartcard exists or how to get one.

E.g. if at 17:30 on a Saturday someone boards the Arriva X4 in Staithes, North Yorkshire, and wants a weekly ticket, telling them they can't have one until the office opens on Monday in Whitby and will issue a smartcard will not encourage new users.

 

[johncrossley]

It still cuts down the number of driver transactions to one per week per customer. The advantage of selling on the bus is the simplicity and accessibility. Not everyone has bank accounts or mobile 'phones, and a system of smartcards means the costs of producing them. There is also in some areas the holidaymaker issue. Someone staying in an place for a week may well want a weekly ticket but not being local have no idea that a local bus smartcard exists or how to get one.

E.g. if at 17:30 on a Saturday someone boards the Arriva X4 in Staithes, North Yorkshire, and wants a weekly ticket, telling them they can't have one until the office opens on Monday in Whitby and will issue a smartcard will not encourage new users.

I bet many if not most of the people paying in cash have a bank account. Most employed people have one as most people get paid into their bank account. Benefits are usually paid into bank accounts as well. Holidaymakers are highly likely to have contactless bank cards. The premium for buying on the bus (if allowed) needs to be much higher to encourage the other ways to pay. In a big city like Sheffield selling weekly tickets on the bus is even less of a good idea. Clearly the UK is strangely addicted to driver ticket selling, but even some British cites don't allow weekly ticket sales on the bus. Obviously London doesn't sell tickets at all and National Express West Midlands, Lothian Buses and Nottingham City Transport don't sell weekly tickets on the bus, as far as I can tell.

They may only have one driver transactions per week but the time taken to issue that ticket is often longer than selling a single ticket, especially if they have to put the ticket in a wallet.

 

[ALEMASTER]

The Travelmaster weekly tickets are all on smart card, there aren't any paper weekly tickets in South Yorkshire these days, except for children under 11. A discounted price is available for buying in advance online, at a vending machine or at a Payzone shop.

Bus ticket machines are all on the transit model, different ones work slightly different I believe but the common thread is it will issue the ticket before the card transaction is authorised by the bank. Simple reason is the banking systems are too slow to be practical on buses. Additionally First bus is in the process of introducing tap-on-tap-off for their own products.

On trams the handheld ticket machines are on the retail model rather than transit model and they connect and get authorisation before issuing the ticket so aren't affected by the problems bus operators are having with fraud. Transactions can be way too slow as a result though and I'm sure fares are getting missed, especially with the £2 fare cap meaning a lot more are buying singles instead of day/week tickets.

I suspect we may be starting to see these decisions getting made across the country - as mentioned above Ensign bus had already done so.

 

[andrewbowden]

This happened in Manchester a while back - again fraud related.

get me there 7 day AnyBus ticket

www.stagecoachbus.com

Mod note: please add a relevant quote from the article you've link to

 

[JGurney]

I bet many if not most of the people paying in cash have a bank account. Most employed people have one as most people get paid into their bank account. Benefits are usually paid into bank accounts as well. Holidaymakers are highly likely to have contactless bank cards. The premium for buying on the bus (if allowed) needs to be much higher to encourage the other ways to pay. In a big city like Sheffield selling weekly tickets on the bus is even less of a good idea. Clearly the UK is strangely addicted to driver ticket selling,

Many probably do but not all. Some will be too young, some will have such tight budgets that they are worried about using debit cards, some foreign tourists find that their credit or debit cards do not work with contactless systems here.
As a teenager (a while ago now) I was doing bus trips while on family holidays some years before I had a current account or a bank card.
For an example of the second category, a friend who lives on disability benefits is unwilling to have a debit card for fear that unless she kept very careful track of her spending with one, she might leave her account balance too low to meet standing orders or direct debits for rent and utility bills and so incur extra charges. She feels much safer withdrawing cash so she knows exactly how much is left in her account andd can tell by looking in her purse how much she has available to spend. If you told her she was not allowed on the bus unless she got a debit card she would probably stop using buses.

Re "the premium.... needs to be much higher to encourage the other ways to pay" the problem is that instead it might discourage people from using the bus at all.

Buying weekly tickets on the bus is not confined to the UK. I am currently in a rural part of Austria and the only way to buy weekly tickets on the local bus (OOVV 564) is from the driver. In places like Salzburg and Vienna they are bought from machines, tobacco kiosks, etc, but in the country those are few and far between so the driver sells them.

 

[johncrossley]

Re "the premium.... needs to be much higher to encourage the other ways to pay" the problem is that instead it might discourage people from using the bus at all.

Buying weekly tickets on the bus is not confined to the UK. I am currently in a rural part of Austria and the only way to buy weekly tickets on the local bus (OOVV 564) is from the driver. In places like Salzburg and Vienna they are bought from machines, tobacco kiosks, etc, but in the country those are few and far between so the driver sells them.

We are talking about big cities here, though, where dwell time is hugely important. Hence why you don't buy tickets from the driver in Vienna. Of course the situation may be different in a rural area where the bus is mostly for accessibility for people without cars rather than mass transit.

 

[JGurney]

I was not particularly referring to large cities, just responding to your comment that selling weekly tickets on the bus was crazy. I agree that in a large city where tickets can be bought at practically all hours from outlets at many places, it would be inefficient to sell weeklys, etc, on board. However it is still important that the ways to obtain them are straightforward and the information easily obtainable. All too often UK local bus ticketing systems can seem challenging to many people without local knowledge.

Going back to Austria as an example, despite a limited grasp of German and no background knowledge of local transport practices, I have been able to use local rural buses, including 'ruffbusen' (DRT-like services which have to be booked by 'phone in advance) with fewer difficulties than I have encountered at home, due to clear information and the services actually doing what the info says they will.