Help and Support
You will need first to set up Apple Pay. On iPhone, simply open the Wallet app, tap +, and follow the steps to add your credit or debit cards.
To enable Express Mode for Apple Pay take the following steps:
For iPhone:
- Open Settings, scroll down and tap Wallet & Apple Pay
- Tap Express Travel Card
- Select a card. You will then need to authenticate with Face ID, Touch ID or passcode.
For Apple Watch:
To check if your card is contactless-enabled, look for the contactless symbol
on your credit, debit, or prepaid card. Most new cards have this feature. If you're unsure, you can contact your bank or card issuer to confirm.
For devices, if you want to use Apple Pay or Google Pay, simply check your device’s app store. You can download the relevant app and set up payments if your device is compatible.
Contactless payments allow you to pay for your bus fare quickly and easily by tapping your contactless-enabled bank card, phone, or smartwatch on the card reader when you board.
Here’s how it works:
When you tap your card on the bus, the payment is processed later the same day.
Instead of charging your card for each tap, we group your journeys into a single payment.
This means you may see one charge for multiple trips instead of separate payments. You can check what you’ve been charged for each journey on our customer portal.
If you made multiple journeys, fare caps may apply reducing the payment amount.
For on bus transactions using Apple Pay, Google Pay and contactless bank cards we have a dedicated page with information about how to claim a refund. Please see the information on this page:
There are a number of reasons why your card payment may have been declined:
Please see the Help Section for the First Bus App, where you can read instructions, FAQs and ways to obtain support if needed.
We have a dedicated page for mTickets where you can read our mTickets FAQs, instructions and contact details for our dedicated app support customer service team.
We want it to be easy for you to plan a bus journey, and if you would like some guidance on how to catch a bus we have put together a guide for you here:
How to catch the bus | First Bus
Within the guide we explain how to:
Our network is designed to provide high quality services wherever there is demand for them. Your route or timetable may change because of a change in demand. We are constantly monitoring/reviewing our network to reflect changing travel patterns and demands from our customers and we never change a route or timetable unnecessarily. Similarly, if we do not currently serve a particular location, it is because there is not sufficient demand to sustain a bus service, or it is simply not possible to run a bus there.
We always publish our changes in advance if a bus route is changing.