The Department for Transport is a procurement process to supply contactless ticketing solutions for trials of the technology across the East Midlands and Yorkshire.

Contactless ticketing is already in use at 53 stations across south-east England and is being extended to a further 47.

At the first six stations to have the facility, over 268,000 entries and exits used contactless cards or mobile devices in the first 6 months of its introduction.

The successful bidders will work alongside train operators Northern and East Midlands Railway to deliver the trials.

The Department for Transport is also working closely with Greater Manchester and the West Midlands to develop proposals for introducing contactless ticketing in their areas, and contactless ‘tap and go’ is being extended from currently being limited to Metrolink services to include Greater Manchester’s Bee network of buses and trams.

Unlike a previous rollout of pay-as-you-go, these trials will make use of GPS technology, which enables a customer’s train journey to be tracked to ensure they pay the best fare for the journey they take.

Contactless ticketing provides passengers with simpler and more flexible train travel, as well as guaranteeing they have the best value ticket on the day and saving them both time and money on when they make several journeys.

During ticket inspections and while passing through ticket barriers, a unique bar code for scanning will pop up in the app.

The trials are being funded by the Government as part of plans to modernise Britain’s transport system, which aims to put passenger experience at the heart of the railways and drive more people back onto trains.

Rail Minister, Lord Peter Hendy commented on the success that contactless ticketing has made in making journeys easier to navigate and attracting more people to our railways. He sees it as only right look at expanding contactless ticketing to other major cities across the North so they can reap the economic benefits that simpler ticketing offers.

“Historically, ticketing across the rail industry has been far too complicated and so anything that makes the customer experience simpler has my vote. We’ve already seen a huge swing away from physical tickets to digital alternatives, which now make up over 80% of journeys on our network. The option to ‘pay as you go’ is a development of that trend which we’re looking forward to introducing on selected routes very soon.”

Alex Hornby, Commercial and Customer Director at Northern