Over quarter of London's 'pay as you go' journeys made using contactless payments

Nearly 27% of ‘pay as you go’ journeys on the London Transport network were made by using 'Contactless' card technology, according to data published on Friday.

Contactless payments have been accepted on London Buses since December 2012, with the technology expanded to cover Tube, tram, DLR, London Overground, and most National Rail services in London in September 2014.

Giving details operator Transport for London said more than 300m journeys have been made using contactless since its launch in 2012, with more than a million journeys now made each day using the said form of payment.

TfL also said since July 2015, over 3.2m journeys were made using mobile devices such as Apple Pay, Barclaycard Contactless Mobile and Vodafone and EE mobile wallets.

Commenting on the figures, Mayor of London Boris Johnson, said: “It's wonderful Londoners and visitors from around the world are embracing the use of contactless technology right across our network.

“Passengers clearly love using their bank cards and mobile phones to travel, and why not - it's quick, easy and gets you the best fare. It's another fine example of how we are innovating and investing to make getting around the Capital as easy as possible.”

TfL said it will continue to make improvements to its Oyster and Contactless payment system and take further strides towards eliminating the use of paper tickets on the Tube.

Plans are already underway to make improvements to the auto-refund system for Oyster and Contactless to better identify where people have accidentally failed to touch out of the network.