Apple begins promoting Apple Pay Express Transit for TfL via the Wallet app

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Tfl Express Transit
Tfl Express Transit (Image credit: Apple)

What you need to know

  • Apple is now promoting Apple Pay Express Transit to people in London.
  • Transport for London supports Express Transit and it's awesome.
  • Apple has a new banner appearing in the Wallet app.

Apple has begun to promote its Apple Pay Express Transit feature to users in London — with Transport for London supporting the feature across the capital. The feature allows people to tap an iPhone or Apple Watch to a payment system without the need to invoke Apple Pay or authenticate whatsoever.

I used Express Transit during a recent visit to London and it's insanely great, but it seems Apple might be worried that enough people don't know about it already. To fix that, it's begun to put banners in the Wallet app to give people a heads-up, as noted by a number of people across Twitter.

What makes Express Transit so great is the fact the iPhone or Apple Watch doesn't need to be powered on, allowing payments to be made even when a battery has run flat. Still, the speed afforded by the lack of authentication is perhaps its greatest feature.

Paying for journeys on Transport for London is easier with Express Mode for Apple Pay. You no longer need to authenticate your payment with Face ID or Touch ID. Simply select a card for travel in Wallet. Then just tap your iPhone or Apple Watch on the yellow card reader and go.

It isn't clear whether Apple is only showing notifications to people who haven't previously used Express Transit, but it would make more sense than displaying the banner to people who already have a card set up for the super speedy payment system.

Oliver Haslam
Oliver Haslam
Contributor

Oliver Haslam has written about Apple and the wider technology business for more than a decade with bylines on How-To Geek, PC Mag, iDownloadBlog, and many more. He has also been published in print for Macworld, including cover stories. At iMore, Oliver is involved in daily news coverage and, not being short of opinions, has been known to 'explain' those thoughts in more detail, too. Having grown up using PCs and spending far too much money on graphics card and flashy RAM, Oliver switched to the Mac with a G5 iMac and hasn't looked back. Since then he's seen the growth of the smartphone world, backed by iPhone, and new product categories come and go. Current expertise includes iOS, macOS, streaming services, and pretty much anything that has a battery or plugs into a wall. Oliver also covers mobile gaming for iMore, with Apple Arcade a particular focus. He's been gaming since the Atari 2600 days and still struggles to comprehend the fact he can play console quality titles on his pocket computer.