Dublin Bus to accept contactless payments shortly, NTA says

The National Transport Authority (NTA) has confirmed that Dublin Bus will begin accepting contactless credit or debit cards for fare payment shortly.

Hugh Cregan, deputy chief executive of NTA revealed the news at a recent meeting of the Eastern and Midlands Regional Assembly following questions from Labour councillor Dermot Lacey.

Speaking after the meeting, Lacey said Dublin Bus accepting contactless payments will attract more people to public transport.

“Public Transport is crucial in the task of climate change and in developing a sustainable economy and providing for cashless payments on the buses will undoubtedly encourage greater use,” he said.

“We need to make it easier for people to pay for vital services such as Dublin Bus, DART and Irish Rail services and paying by Debit or mobile payments is the obvious next step.

“While the introduction of the Leap Card by the Labour Party in 2011 was a great innovation, there are still many restrictions on topping up online.

“We know that there is a small cohort that will always pay by cash who may be older or more vulnerable people and allowances should be made for this cohort to still pay by cash if they wish.”

Lacey says contactless payments have been a success in London where they were introduced in 2017.

“Since contactless payments were introduced on Transport for London services over six years ago, over 50 percent of customers now use this service over the Oyster card or cash payments,” he says.

“If we are serious about protecting passengers and public transport staff, the NTA need to speed up the introduction of contactless payments on public transport.”

“My only concern is that the NTA see a longer run in time to this than I would hope for and I would encourage the Authority to accelerate this process.

“A simpler accessible payment system is good for everyone and indeed can lead to a safer regime for Drivers.”

In December last year, the NTA said it was hoping to trial a pilot contactless payment service on some bus services in the second quarter of 2023.

Transport Minister Eamon Ryan said that there “has been a real issue around the IT systems in our bus network.”

“They put a lot of patches in, that means that is back now to much higher accuracy now, the problems of two or three months ago are diminished but we do need a much wider entire IT system.

“And I don’t have the exact date in terms of when that full contactless system will be in place, but it is a first priority.”