New Yorkers, rejoice! If you’re an iPhone user, your days of buying physical metro cards are up (if you want them to be). That’s because starting this Friday, May 31, select MTA subway and bus stations will take contactless Apple Pay payments in lieu of physical metro cards.
At launch, paying by Apple Pay will be enabled on all Staten Island buses, in addition to 16 subway stations on the 4, 5, and 6 lines between Atlantic Avenue-Barclays Center (Brooklyn) and Grand Central-42 Street (Manhattan), reports Engadget. To use Apple Pay on these routes, you’ll need to make sure you have an Apple Pay payment method set up on your iPhone and then make sure Express Transit mode is enabled.
One drawback to this beautiful new contactless world is that right now Express Transit Apple Pay payments will only let passengers pay for single-use rides. You can’t swipe your iPhone or Apple Watch if you rely on weekly or monthly metro packages, though support for those is coming in the future.
And while Apple Pay Express Transit support only works on a few subway and bus lines from Friday, the plan is to have the entire NYC transit system support contactless payments by the end of 2020. Oh, and don’t feel left out, Android users. Google Pay contactless payments are also supported on the same lines and routes from this Friday, too.
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