Public transport in New South Wales has support for tap on payment using various mobile payment services on phones and wearables, but the bus system has now. Fortunately, that’s changing.
If you regularly rely on the bus system in parts of Sydney and New South Wales, there’s good news, though it’s coming slowly: you may soon tap on across the transport system using your phone or wearable.
It means if you accidentally leave your Opal card at home in the near future, it might not be so much an accident or even a dire issue, especially if you have a phone with a wallet attached.
Already launched on trains, light rail, and ferries, and even now supporting the Opal benefits thanks to a collaboration with the Commonwealth Bank, Transport NSW is starting to add contactless payment support for buses, too.
It’s a gradual rollout for Sydney, that’s for sure, as the technology is being rolled out to buses using the Busways services in Western Sydney, CDC Hillsbus in North West Sydney, and Dion’s Bus Service outside of Sydney in Wollongong.
Services from those companies are the first to get contactless payment for tap-on, tap-off without an Opal card, using either Apple Pay, Google Pay, Samsung Pay, Fitbit Pay, and Garmin Pay, alongside just your standard tap-to-pay debit and credit cards.
As long as one of those is linked to an American Express, Mastercard, or Visa card, you can tap on, and we’re told just like the Opal benefits being extended recently on train and ferry, they should travel to the buses, too, including half price travel after eight paid journeys in a week.
If you’re looking at this news and wondering just when your part of Sydney will see buses that can accept payment from your wearable and phone, patience is the answer, with Transport NSW expecting contactless payment support to be available on all buses in the Opal network by the end of October.
That means you don’t have long to wait until you can tap on to a Sydney bus with an Apple iPhone, most Samsung Galaxy phones, an Apple Watch, a Samsung Galaxy Watch, or even one of those Fitbit models with a wallet built in.
