CPAY
CPAY is the codename of the contactless payment system operated by Transport for London in and around London. It does not have a public facing brand name and is simply known as pay as you go by contactless by the public. The model has been copied around the world.
History
In 2014, Transport for London became the first public transport provider in the world to accept payment from contactless bank cards. TfL first started accepting contactless debit and credit cards on London Buses on 13 December 2012, expanding to the Underground, Tram and the Docklands Light Railway in September 2014. Since 2016, contactless payment can also take place using contactless-enabled mobile devices such as phones and smartwatches, using Apple Pay, Google Pay and Samsung Pay.TfL designed and coded the contactless payment system in-house, at a cost of £11million, after realising existing commercial solutions were inflexible or too focused on retail use. Since the launch of contactless payment in 2012, over 500 million journeys have been made, using over 12 million contactless bank cards. Consequently, TfL is now one of Europe's largest contactless merchants, with around 1 in 10 contactless transactions in the UK taking place on the TfL network.
In 2016, TfL licensed their contactless payment system to Cubic, the original developers of the Oyster card, allowing the technology to be sold to other transport providers worldwide. In 2017, licensing deals were signed with New York City, New South Wales and Boston.
The same requirement to touch in and out on underground services applies to contactless cards. The same price capping that applies to the use of Oyster cards applies to the use of contactless cards. The fare paid every day is settled with the bank and appears on the debit or credit card statement. Detailed usage data is written to Transport for London's systems and is available for customers who register their contactless cards with Transport for London. Unlike an Oyster card, a contactless card does not store credit and there is no need or facility to add credit to the card.
Since August 2019, expansion to the pay as you go network around London has been done exclusively on contactless but not Oyster.
Features
Although the use of a contactless payment card for travel is exactly the same as an Oyster card, as a contactless card cannot be written into, they work differently in the background.An Oyster card stores the balance in the card itself, and records all the touches made in the card. It can also store discounts and season tickets as well. None of the above is possible with a contactless payment card, therefore all the fare calculations are done in batch on the back end, after all the touches in a day are aggregated from the readers.
Daily and weekly capping
Like an Oyster card, contactless cards offer daily capping. However, the capping on Oyster cards are done in real-time, with the zones used stored inside the card, which is not possible on contactless. As the fares are calculated in batch by the back end for contactless cards, cheaper non-zonal caps may be available on contactless cards for certain stations.In addition, due to how Oyster system works, if you start from zone 6 for one journey into zone 1, then stay within zone 1 all day, the Oyster system will charge you up to the zones 1-6 cap, but on contactless, if the zones 1-2 cap plus the single extension from zone 6 is cheaper, it will charge that instead since the back end looks for the whole day of the journey history and charges as a batch.
Contactless cards also offer weekly capping as well, which was not available initially on Oyster due to the real-time nature and the information stored on the card.
Since 27 September 2021, the back end processing used for contactless payments has also been applied on adult-rate Oyster cards, which enables weekly capping for these cards as well. Any overcharging compared to a contactless payment card, like the scenarios described above, will be refunded automatically to the Oyster card.
Unpaid fares
As the amount to be charged isn't known after travelling, at first use of a card, a pre-authorisation of £0.10 is requested on the card to check if it is valid. If the actual fare requested after the day is declined, the card is temporarily blocked for use until the unpaid fare is paid.Use
The use of a contactless payment card by travellers is exactly the same as with an Oyster card. However, unlike an Oyster card, a contactless payment card can only be used for paying as you go at the adult rate. Season tickets and discounts cannot be associated with a contactless payment card.Coverage
CPAY is available everywhere an Oyster card is accepted. In addition, it is also available at the following National Rail stations, where Oyster card is not accepted:As the Oyster card supports a maximum of 15 zones., the stations above are listed as zone 16 in the fare data, indicating that they are outside the Oyster area. The contactless payment cap doesn't apply on a zonal basis, with caps applied on the basis of individual stations.
The contactless payment used on Luton DART is also CPAY, as evidenced by DART journeys showing up in TfL contactless history, but its fare is separate and not integrated into the remainder of rail network.