First Group adds NFC bus tickets to Google Pay

Public transportation operator First Group has begun a pilot of a new mobile ticketing service that uses host card emulation (HCE) to let customers with an Android NFC phone purchase a bus ticket, provision it to Google Pay and then use their smartphone to tap an on-board contactless reader when they board a bus. The pilot is taking place on First Glasgow bus services in the UK city of Glasgow “before being rolled out to more than 1.6 million passengers across the First Bus network”.