First Bus has introduced the Ticketer and Littlepay Tap On/Tap Off (TOTO) capped contactless travel product at its Leicester and Potteries operating companies.
The scheme has involved the installation of 92 tap-off readers in Leicester and 105 at Potteries. The concept went live in the East Midlands in June and in North Staffordshire in late July.
In the former, TOTO has been implemented in partnership with Leicester City Council with funding from the Department for Transport’s Transforming Cities Fund. That has enabled the purchase and installation of the tap off machines.
Customers are charged for the travel that they make but with a daily or weekly cap. They tap on with a contactless payment card via the conventional Ticketer machine and use the dedicated reader when alighting. Ticketer says that Tap On/Tap Off will allow First Bus to gather more data on travel patterns thanks to the addition of alighting information.
Adds First Bus Commercial Director Simon Pearson: “We have worked closely with our partners Ticketer and Littlepay to understand and implement technology that brings new benefits to our customers. Making ticketing easier is central to our plan to welcome back existing users and to encourage others to start taking the bus more often.
“The TOTO function makes journeys simpler and gives customers peace of mind, as they know that they will be charged the best value fare, whether they have taken the bus for a single journey or multiple trips throughout the day.”
TOTO is a multi-operator scheme developed by Ticketer and Littlepay, a transit-focused payment provider. The two suppliers are established partners.
Ticketer’s card readers are pre-integrated into Littlepay’s payment platform, which handles a range of processes including tap aggregation, capping, deny list management and automatic debt recovery. Littlepay also provides an API connection to complete the end-to-end contactless ticketing solution.
