This week, Brighton & Hove Buses and Metrobus, bus companies within the Go-Ahead Group, launched a new flexible fare capping option to their tap-on, tap-off contactless payment offering to bring value to passengers whose travel-for-work habits have changed since the pandemic hit.

Go-Ahead identified the need for a new type of fare cap and has worked closely with Littlepay to develop a solution. The team recognised that customers considering hybrid and flexible working may vary how often they travel week to week and strongly benefit from dynamic fares that provide the best deal for all these patterns. Tap-on, tap-off with flexible capping creates incremental discounts each time they travel, over a given time period, with the value increasing with more frequent travel.

“Crucially, our new flexible fare cap enables our transit operator customers to bring value to passengers that might only commute a few days per week, and creates increasing rewards the more they travel.”

Sheryll Ricketts, Solutions Consultancy Lead at Littlepay

In Brighton, for instance, when passengers meet a single daily cap once in a week, there is the base daily cap discount; if they meet a second daily cap, there is an additional 5% discount for that day. This increases to 10% if they meet a third daily cap and to 15% for a fourth. Once a passenger reaches the price of a weekly ticket, the rest of their travel that week is free.

“We wanted to ensure that our customers have options that work for them, including if plans change. Flexible capping is a fantastic example of technology taking complexity away from the customer, providing trust and convenience through ease of travel and tailored fares. Huge thanks to the Littlepay team for working with us to develop this innovation, which meets our customers’ needs and makes bus travel a more attractive travel option.”

Sean McLaughlin, Senior Solutions Manager at the Go-Ahead Group

We’re looking forward to more operators switching on this passenger-pleasing capping option within our payments platform to give their passengers simple, best-value travel.