You can now pay for London buses with your phone

As of today, you can now use certain smartphones to pay for travel on London’s network of buses.

Commuters with EE’s Cash on Tap enabled handsets can tap in on buses as they would with an Oyster card.

The service is currently only available on a selection of phones, including some of the Samsung Galaxy and Sony Xperia range, all of which run Android operating systems.

An EE spokesperson said that while the company is “always looking to add to the list of compatible devices” it remains unclear how soon this service will be made available on all smartphones.

Oyster out of fashion?

The Cash on Tap system works in the same way Oyster cards do. The daily and weekly caps function in the same way and at the same rates.

The mobile-method of payment comes after London’s buses went cashless earlier this summer. Cash on Tap will be rolled out on Underground, DLR and Overground from September 16th.

The service removes the need to queue up to top up Oyster cards as it can all be done from within the app.

A TfL spokesperson added that they will accept “any mobile phone services that are compatible with the system” but did not specify how many of those services there are.