London Underground just got Apple Pay’s express mode

If you’ve ever been held up behind someone fumbling around with their phone at the turnstiles of London’s Underground, you’ll enjoy this.

Apple’s been aiming to make cashless fare payments quicker and easier with the rollout of the Express Transit feature on Apple Pay this year, and now it’s landed in the UK.

Launched in partnership with Transport for London (TfL), the feature allows travellers on public transport systems to use Apple Pay without authenticating their payment with Face ID or Touch ID. You can just tap your iPhone or Apple Watch on the card reader and get through those gates quicksmart.

London commuters with iPhones from the 6S and SE onwards, or Apple Watches, can now use Express Mode across all TfL services, including the Tube, buses and trams. Notably, the feature is just available for these services — all other payments still need Face ID or Touch ID authentication.

To activate the feature, iPhone users need only go into “Wallet & Apple Pay” within the Settings app and then assign an Apple Pay-connected debit or credit card as an “Express Transit Card.” If you’ve got an Apple Watch, the Express Transit Card setting automatically transfers over. And that’s it.

The Tube is used by around two million people every day, so it’ll be interesting to see how the new feature affects the daily grind through the city’s station gates.

Apple Pay’s Express Mode feature has been available in the U.S. since April 2019, with Portland’s TriMet the first city in the country to accept it. Then, the company took on the challenge of applying the feature to New York’s mighty 115-year-old subway system in May. At the time of the NYC rollout, Apple also announced Express Transit for Chicago, but there’s been no movement on this yet — you can use Apple Pay without Express Transit with the Ventra system, though.

It’s already available in China, in both Beijing and Shanghai via each city’s transit cards, and in Japan on forms of transit that accept Suica since 2016.

Other cities that offer Apple Pay without the Express Transit option include Sydney via Transport for NSW, Vancouver via TransLink, and Singapore through its Land Transport Authority. In Russia, the feature is available via Moscow Metro, as well as in cities Saint Petersburg and Novosibirsk. And in mainland China, the cities of Guangzhou and Hangzhou via UnionPay (CUP) credit and debit cards respectively.

Additional reporting by Raymond Wong.