No Change? No Problem on Reading Buses

Bus travel isn’t something many people think about unless they live in a large city with a public transit system.

For those who do ride buses, having exact change on hand was something of a difficult policy to live with. Some moves tried to fix such a problem, and all with certain problems of their own.

Reading Buses, however, is making the move that many others have made to address the problem, and bringing a mobile payment system in to allow even those without exact change to ride more readily.

Reading Buses offers service to around 62,000 customers every day, and as such, needs to process a lot of change.

Thanks to a new website—which will hit first, in the summer of this year—and a mobile app to come later, users will be able to cover ticket prices without the need for exact change, which could be a problem for those who didn’t have exactly 1.9 pounds sterling on hand.

The new systems will not only offer up real-time information about routes—always valuable for those who travel by bus—but also will be able to make payments, representing the first bus app in the United Kingdom to allow both payments and route information at once.

This isn’t a huge step for Reading Buses; cash payments only account for 45 percent of transactions, while most of the rest is hooked to a smart card.

Making the jump to an app from there isn’t exactly a long shot, and Reading Buses is also set to bring out a direct debit option for those who routinely use the card.

Given the degree with which mobile payments have caught on in Great Britain in general, it’s kind of surprising to see Reading Buses essentially just getting started. However, this kind of development qualifies under even the most basic “better-late-than-never” concept.

It would have been better to have this months ago; that it’s coming at all, though, is good enough. This illustrates clearly how mobile payments are gaining ground even in unexpected places, and the bus may be one of the most unexpected of all.

Still, the news is good, and soon Reading Buses riders will have the opportunity to put mobile payments technology to use on that everyday bus ride, and have just one more place to put such technology to work.