Roger Fingas
MasterCard on Thursday announced the return of a promotion letting people ride the Transport for London network for free or at a discount each Monday, so long as they pay for their trips using Apple Pay.
The new promotion will run Feb. 29 through March 14, and cover most TfL services, the main exceptions being the Thames Clipper River Bus, and National Rail services without a yellow card reader. MasterCard said it will refund a rider up to £28.10 per each Monday.
As before, people will have to touch in and touch out using an Apple Pay-ready device with NFC. Currently that includes the iPhone 6/6 Plus, the iPhone 6s/6s Plus, and the Apple Watch. People must also have a U.K. MasterCard.
The original promotion spanned Nov. 23 through Dec. 14.
The deal's return is presumably meant to spark more interest in using Apple Pay. Apple hasn't said how popular the service is in the U.K., but it has sounded a positive note about the service's adoption in the United States.
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4 Comments
Use it all the time on the London Underground, though I do wonder what happens if your battery dies while you're on a train.
I've warmed to Apple Pay quite a bit since the incredibly sluggish and inconvenient chip card system became mandatory in some cases.
When I bought my iPad Pro, none of my debit cards worked to pay the bill. This is because my bank is trying to force the chip on us, and Apple Stores don't support the chip. So I said, Oh, let's try Apple Pay. That didn't work, either. In frustration, I called my bank and they changed some flags in my account and got the transaction to go through.
Since then, Apple Pay payments have been flawless, and anything's better than the inconvenience of the chip system, so I have a feeling Apple Pay adoption is going to increase significantly over the next few months.