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TapTapCap
Contactless payments with daily and weekly capping – from £5.00 per day and £24.50 per week!
Let us work out the cheapest adult daily or weekly fare for you. Just tap your contactless card or device when you board a Lothian bus. On Airlink, East Coast Buses or Lothian Country, please state your destination before tapping.
There’s no need to tap again when you get off the bus. Your card or device is your ticket, so one per person.
Use the same card or device all day and the following morning we’ll automatically charge you the cheapest adult daily fare for the journeys you’ve made. Keep using that same card or device or all week and once you’ve reached one of our weekly caps, which run from Monday to Sunday, you won’t pay any more for the rest of the week. Our Fares & Tickets page has details of what journeys fall under which cap.
Please note, TapTapCap does not include journeys on Edinburgh Trams.
View your contactless journey and payment history for the past 28 days in our Contactless Portal.
If you’re looking to check a payment, please note that payments normally appear on your bank statement a couple of days after you travelled.
Here are some of the questions we're commonly asked...
“What’s this 10p/£1 transaction in my account?”
If you use a Mastercard, your bank statement may show a ‘pending’ 10p or £1 charge for your first tap. This is just a temporary charge to check the card is valid – payment isn’t collected. The time it takes to be returned to your available balance depends on your bank – most banks take a couple of working days, but some banks take up to 30 days.
"Why was a payment taken in the middle of the night when I was not on the bus?"
This is payment for a previous day’s travel. When you tap your card, we don’t charge you immediately because we don’t know how much your daily fare will be at that point – your daily fare depends on any other journeys you might take that day/night. You’ll therefore be charged the cheapest fare for the journeys you’ve made in the early hours of the following day.
“My card/device was declined but a payment was taken minutes later?”
If your card was declined but you’ve seen a payment come out of your account shortly afterwards, this will have been payment for a previous journey that remained outstanding. By attempting to use your card on board, this triggers an attempt to collect the unpaid fare and – if successful – the fare will come out of your account and your card will be unblocked.
“How can I check TapTapCap journeys/payments?”
“I still need some help!”
If you can’t find the answer to your query here, please get in touch with our contactless team by emailing [email protected].
Check out our FAQ Page for more information about TapTapCap and Contactless.
You can also use contactless to purchase tickets (without capping) for to pay for Child/Family tickets, or to pay for more than one passenger with one card or device.
Just request the ticket you need and wait for the driver to indicate that you can tap your card – please note that capping cannot be applied to paper tickets, so please take care to request the appropriate ticket.
Paying for someone else? You can tap your card/device once to record a TapTapCap journey for yourself and then request the appropriate paper ticket for the other person.