{"id":612120,"date":"2025-12-04T17:56:19","date_gmt":"2025-12-04T17:56:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/612120\/"},"modified":"2025-12-04T17:56:19","modified_gmt":"2025-12-04T17:56:19","slug":"contactless-payments-for-travel-to-major-london-airports-stansted-and-southend-has-been-delayed-until-summer-2026","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/612120\/","title":{"rendered":"Contactless Payments for Travel to Major London Airports Stansted and Southend Has Been Delayed Until Summer 2026"},"content":{"rendered":"

Remember when we told you that Stansted and Southend airports would finally catch up to the rest of London\u2019s airports and introduce contactless payments<\/a>? Well, it looks like\u00a0that\u2019s actually not going to happen for a little while longer.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Stansted and Southend were both supposed to start rolling out tap-in-tap-out tech from December 14 alongside 48 other stations in the southeast of England. The move would have meant that people would no longer face fines of up to \u00a3100 at Stansted Airport for not realising that they couldn\u2019t\u00a0use contactless payment for\u00a0Stansted Express like they can across the rest of London (though there are big red signs at Liverpool Street\u00a0and Tottenham Hale stations\u00a0warning you).\u00a0<\/p>\n

But\u00a0the plans have\u00a0now been delayed. On Wednesday (December 3), Greater Anglia announced that it\u2019s postponing part of its\u00a0contactless rollout\u00a0until summer 2026. Thirty stations across the southeast, including\u00a0Stevenage, Luton, Oxted and Reigate, will still join the contactless network next week, but the remaining 20, including Stansted and Southend will have wait.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Greater Anglia said that during testing for the technology, issues arose that\u00a0could have affected the price paid and prevented the technology from working as intended. Contactless\u00a0fares have to be fully integrated into Transport for London\u2019s fare system in order for the machines to work properly, but this hasn\u2019t been done in time for the initially planned rollout. The train operator said that \u2018additional work is required to ensure this integration is seamless and delivers a reliable experience for customers\u2019.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Martin Beable, Greater Anglia\u2019s Managing Director, added: \u2018We understand how frustrating it is when improvements like this are delayed, and I am very sorry for the disappointment this will cause some of our customers. It is essential, however, that contactless ticketing works reliably from day one.<\/p>\n

\u2018Our teams are working closely with our partners to complete this work as quickly as possible, and we remain committed to introducing contactless ticketing across these additional stations by summer 2026.\u2019<\/p>\n

ICYMI:\u00a0Train ticket prices in England are being frozen in 2026 \u2013 but will tube fares in London still rise?<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

Plus:\u00a0the London Congestion Charge will increase in price next year for the first time since 2020<\/a>.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Get the latest and greatest from the Big Smoke \u2013 from news and reviews to events and trends. Just\u00a0<\/strong>follow our Time Out London WhatsApp channel<\/strong><\/a>.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Stay in the loop: sign up to our\u00a0<\/strong>free Time Out London newsletter<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0for the best of the city, straight to your inbox.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Remember when we told you that Stansted and Southend airports would finally catch up to the rest of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":612121,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7757],"tags":[748,11648,393,4884,257,11649,183,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-612120","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-london","8":"tag-britain","9":"tag-categories-travel","10":"tag-england","11":"tag-great-britain","12":"tag-london","13":"tag-news-transport-travel","14":"tag-travel","15":"tag-uk","16":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115662591331004606","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/612120","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=612120"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/612120\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/612121"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=612120"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=612120"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=612120"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}