Manchester 🇬🇧

Yes, on the buses and the trams, and it is the only way to get a fare cap. Tap your own Visa, Mastercard or Maestro card, or a phone or watch running Apple Pay, Google Pay, Samsung Pay, Barclaycard Contactless Mobile, Fitbit Pay or Garmin Pay. American Express is not accepted, on any mode, for anyone. Cards issued outside the UK work on the same readers, though your bank may add an overseas transaction fee. There is nothing to buy, register or top up.

The tap is different on each mode, and getting it wrong costs money. On a bus you tap once as you board and never tap off. On a Metrolink tram you tap the reader on the platform before you board and tap out again at your final stop, with the same card; if you change trams part-way you do not tap again in between. Miss the tap out and TfGM charges an incomplete journey fare of £4.60, which is not refunded by any cap and does not count towards one.

Where it works is narrower than Greater Manchester. It pays on Metrolink across zones 1 to 4 and on the Bee Network franchised buses, which means Go North West, Diamond Bus North West, First Manchester, Stagecoach Manchester and Metroline Manchester. TfGM states plainly that you cannot use tap and go on non-Bee-Network services running inside Greater Manchester, so on one of those a tap buys you nothing. Trains are not on it yet either: TfGM describes contactless tap in and tap out on rail in the future tense, as part of the Bee Network rail integration still to come, and Northern and TransPennine Express do not take it today.

Two different charges can follow a missing fare, and they are not the same instrument. The franchised bus operators' terms define a contactless standard fare of £60. A penalty fare notice issued during an inspection is £120. Use the same card or device for every tap all day, because the cap is counted per card and switching between your card and your phone splits the day in two, and check what you were charged at contactless.beenetwork.com using the card you tapped with.

Yes, and it is one tap. Tap your contactless card, phone or watch on the reader as you board and that is the whole transaction; there is no tap off on a Manchester bus, and nothing to do when you get off. Visa, Mastercard and Maestro all work, as do Apple Pay, Google Pay, Samsung Pay, Barclaycard Contactless Mobile, Fitbit Pay and Garmin Pay. American Express is not accepted.

It pays on the Bee Network franchised buses, which is Go North West, Diamond Bus North West, First Manchester, Stagecoach Manchester and Metroline Manchester. It does not pay on non-Bee-Network services operating inside Greater Manchester: TfGM says so directly, and tapping on one of those buys you nothing. If you are not sure which you are boarding, look for Bee Network yellow before you tap.

Tapping is also the only way to get the bus cap. Bus travel stops charging at £5.00 in a day and £20.00 in a week, and no 60 minutes of bus travel costs more than £2.00 however many buses you take in it. All of that is counted per card, so use the same card or device every time; switch between your card and your phone halfway through the day and the two halves never add up. Travelling without a valid fare, the operators' terms set a contactless standard fare of £60, and a penalty fare notice issued during an inspection is £120.

The Bee Card is TfGM's own smartcard — the card the old 'get me there' card became — and a visitor almost certainly should not bother with one. You cannot be sent it: TfGM posts Bee Cards by second-class Royal Mail and will not deliver to any address outside the UK, so unless you can collect one at an Information and Ticket Office it is not obtainable on a short trip at all.

It is also the version that does not cap. Bee Network's automatic daily and weekly ceilings belong to contactless bank cards and phones alone; the Bee Card is a holder for tickets you have already bought. You order a travelcard — a single, or a day, weekend, 7-day, 28-day or annual product for the tram, the buses, or both — up to 7 days ahead through a Bee Network online account, then touch the card on a reader to load it. Nothing accrues by itself, so if you buy the wrong product you pay for the wrong product.

On the vehicle it behaves like any other ticket here: touch in on the bus, touch in and touch out on the tram, and show it or touch it when asked. It is no use on Northern or TransPennine Express trains, which are outside the Bee Network fare system.

Tap your own bank card or phone instead. It costs nothing, needs no account, and it is the only thing here that puts a ceiling on your day.

Yes, for an adult tapping a contactless bank card or phone, and only for that. On the buses the day stops at £5.00 and the week at £20.00, across all five Bee Network operators. On the Metrolink tram it depends on the zones you cross: a single zone stops at £1.90 a day and £10.60 a week, and all four zones at £4.90 a day and £31.00 a week. Ride both and the combined ceiling runs from £5.40 for the buses plus one tram zone up to £7.80 a day and £41.00 a week for the buses plus every tram zone.

There is a peak trap in the tram figures. Start any tram journey between 7am and 9.30am on a weekday and the whole day switches to the higher rate — £2.70 instead of £1.90 for one zone, £7.10 instead of £4.90 for all four, and £9.50 instead of £7.80 for bus and tram together. It is triggered by the tap, not by the ticket you meant to buy. Underneath it all sits an hourly ceiling too: never more than £2.00 in any 60 minutes of bus travel.

Everything else is outside it. A Bee Card gets no cap of any kind, and neither does a ticket bought in the Bee Network app or from a driver; non-Bee-Network buses running in Greater Manchester are excluded outright, and so is every train. A £4.60 incomplete journey on the tram does not count towards the ceiling and is charged on top of it.

Use the same card or phone for every tap — the day is counted per card, so switching between your phone and the plastic starts a second tally.

Yes. Transport for Greater Manchester says so outright: plenty of contactless cards from outside the UK work for pay as you go on its readers — Mastercard, Maestro, Visa and VPAY — and the one thing it warns you about is an overseas transaction fee from your own bank. Where the card was issued is not the test here.

The scheme printed on it is. American Express is not supported for anyone, at home or overseas, so an Amex will not pay for a bus or a tram in Greater Manchester however ordinary it looks. Apple Pay with Express Mode, Google Pay, Samsung Pay, Barclaycard Contactless Mobile, Fitbit Pay and Garmin Pay all work, but a wallet is only as good as the card sitting behind it.

Two limits are worth knowing before your first tap. Tap and go works on the five franchised Bee Network bus operators and on the Metrolink trams, and TfGM states plainly that you cannot use it on non-Bee-Network services running within Greater Manchester. And the caps build on a single card, so use the same card or device every time: switch between the plastic and the phone halfway through a day and you have two part-days that never add up. Pick one at the first tram stop or bus door and stay with it.

On a Bee Network bus or a Metrolink tram there are two different charges, and which one you get depends on how you were paying.

If you have no valid ticket at all, it is a Standard Fare of £120, reduced to £60 if you pay within 14 days of the notice you are handed. If you were paying by tapping and the tap did not go through, there is a second and quite different instrument: a flat Contactless Standard Fare of £60, charged straight to the card or phone you presented a couple of days after the inspection. That one comes with no notice to read, no early-payment rate to catch and nothing to pay off — the money simply goes; what you get instead is a right to appeal it. Which of the two an inspector reaches for is their decision, not yours, so the only safe move is to watch the reader accept the tap before you sit down.

Missing a touch is separate and cheaper. Buses here are touch-in only, so there is nothing to miss. The Metrolink tram is touch in and touch out, and if you do not touch out within 2 hours — or if you touch in and out at the same stop, which tells the system nothing about where you went — you are charged an Incomplete Journey Fare of £4.60, TfGM's maximum single fare. It does not count towards your daily or weekly cap and is added on top of it, so it is a genuinely expensive mistake on a day you would otherwise have capped.

The trains are not part of any of this. On Northern and TransPennine Express, travelling without a ticket brings a National Rail Penalty Fare of £100 plus the single fare for the journey you were making, reduced to £50 plus that fare if you pay within 21 days, which is also the deadline for appealing it.

So on the tram, touch out — every time, even when the gate-less platform makes it feel optional.

Everything leaves from The Station, the shared rail, tram, bus and coach interchange reached from either terminal along the covered Skylink walkway — about five minutes from Terminal 3 and ten from Terminal 2.

The train is quickest: Northern and TransPennine Express both run to Manchester Piccadilly in about 20 minutes. It is an ordinary National Rail ticket at ordinary Anytime or Off-Peak prices with no airport supplement, and it is bought from the train operator — its own app, its own site, or the station machines and ticket office. A Bee Network ticket is not valid on it, no contactless tap works on it, and nothing you spend on it counts towards a Bee Network cap.

The Metrolink tram is the one your bank card pays for. The Airport Line runs to Victoria by way of Market Street, the airport stop is an ordinary tram zone 4 with no airport supplement, and tapping in and out means the ordinary ceilings apply — £4.90 for a day on the tram across all four zones, or £7.10 if you tap in between 7am and 9.30am on a weekday. Bee Network buses 43 and 103 go the same way to Piccadilly Gardens for the bus cap of £5.00 a day, and take a tap, a Bee Card, an app ticket or cash to the driver.

Black cabs rank outside both terminals and at The Station around the clock, on the meter.

Decide by ticket, not by speed: if you are tapping a bank card, walk to the tram or the bus stop, because the train will want a ticket bought separately before you board.

Yes, but only where something is sold to you — never at a reader. The readers on Bee Network buses and Metrolink platforms take a card or a phone and nothing else, so cash here always buys a paper ticket first.

Bee Network bus drivers take coins and smaller notes and sell you a paper ticket on the spot; large notes, cheques and foreign currency are refused. Metrolink's ticket machines, at the tram stops rather than on the tram, take coins and notes and give change. On the trains, cash goes over a counter rather than into the machine. TransPennine Express says that where the self-service machine takes cards only, you pay cash at the station ticket office; Northern's route is different again — if the ticket office is closed and cash is all you have, you collect a Promise to Pay notice from the machine, board on that, and buy from the conductor. PayPoint shops across Greater Manchester — newsagents, corner shops, petrol stations — sell Bee Bus and tram season tickets over the counter as well.

The catch is what cash cannot buy: a paper ticket is a fixed price and earns you nothing towards the daily or weekly cap, which only a tapped bank card gets. So if you are paying cash, buy the right all-day ticket deliberately rather than a string of singles — nothing here will do it for you.

Yes. Every Bee Network bus driver takes coins and smaller notes and prints you a paper ticket — the Hopper single, £2 for an adult, which then carries you onto any other Bee Network bus free within 60 minutes. Large notes, cheques and foreign currency are refused, so break a big note before you get to the stop.

It costs the same as tapping, and gets you less. A contactless tap is the same £2 an hour, but only the tap accumulates towards the daily and weekly ceilings — £5.00 and £20.00 on the buses for an adult — while paper tickets are fixed prices that add up without limit. Cash also buys nothing at all on a non-Bee-Network bus running in Greater Manchester, and those are outside the fare system entirely.

So use coins if that is what you have, but buy a day ticket rather than a fourth single, or tap a bank card and let the ceiling do it for you.

Yes, and there are two quite different ways to do it — one of which is much better value than the other.

The Bee Network app, TfGM's own, sells Bee Bus tickets, tram tickets and Bee AnyBus + Tram travelcards, paid for with Apple Pay or Google Pay inside the app. What you get is a ticket you hold up and show: a fixed price, bought in advance, with no capping behind it. If you buy the 7-day bus ticket that way you land on the same £20.00 an adult would have reached by tapping, but you pay it whether you travel that much or not.

The other way is to make the phone itself the ticket. Hold it against the reader on the bus or the tram platform — Apple Pay including Express Mode, Google Pay, Samsung Pay, a Fitbit or a Garmin all count — and it is treated as a contactless bank card, which means it is the version that caps: £5.00 a day on the buses, £2.00 an hour, and the tram and combined ceilings on top. Touch out on the tram; the bus is touch-in only.

For the trains it is neither: Northern and TransPennine Express sell their own tickets through their own apps and sites, and nothing bought in the Bee Network app is valid on them.

So unless you already know you will be travelling all week, skip the app tickets and just tap the phone.

Manchester's discounts are for people who live here. All eight require you to live in Greater Manchester, and five ask you to prove the address: the igo child photocard, Our Pass for sixteen- to eighteen-year-olds, the discounted 28-day bus ticket for eighteen- to twenty-one-year-olds, the care leavers' pass and the older person's pass. The scholar's permit for school and college journeys asks instead for a photo stamped by the school or college and proof of name and age. The two disabled person's passes name no document list of their own — an eligibility checker sends you to a form for your particular condition. Most charge a fee for the card on top of the paperwork. A visitor qualifies for none of them and pays the standard fare.

The one still worth knowing about is the igo card, because it is not really a discount. It is the proof of age that lets an 11- to 16-year-old buy child tickets on Greater Manchester's buses and trams at all. It costs £10 and is issued only to a child who lives in Greater Manchester or attends school there, so a visiting child of that age pays the adult fare.

What is left is the fare everyone else pays, and one thing softens it. Contactless tap-and-go is the only way to pay that earns Bee Network's automatic daily and weekly caps, with nothing to buy and nothing to register; the Bee Card sells fixed-price Travelcards instead and carries no cap at all. So tap the same bank card or phone for every bus and tram and let the cap do the work the concession would have done.

Fares yes; journey times only for airports. Fares, caps and penalties are printed where an operator publishes them, with the source beside each figure. Journey times appear only on the airport pages, as the rough time from the airport to the centre where one is published; there are no timetables here. For a live departure or a door-to-door route, use the operator's own journey planner.