NatEx Dundee smartcards catching on

In the past year, almost 150,000 National Express Dundee smartcards have been bought. Additionally, nearly 20,000 smart Student Weeklies have been bought since the start of this academic year alone. National Express Dundee is the first in Scotland to operate a smart ticketing system which offers commercial products on the national Entitlement Card, as well as its own smartcard, Discovr. The technology was successfully piloted in a partnership with Dundee and Angus College in February 2013, when students were able to pre-load their NEC card with bus tickets for a whole term, allowing them 24/7 travel between home and classes and across the city. The project proved popular with participants, who reported the smartcards made it much easier to attend college, even when they had no cash. Since then, the Discovr card has been launched with the Adult Weekly and Student Weekly tickets available to pre-load onto the card. More ticket options are to follow in the next few weeks.

MD of National Express Dundee, Elsie Turbyne, said, ‘We love our smartcards and I’m glad to see that customers love them too. The uptake of the Discovr card proves that there’s a demand for this kind of product and I’m proud that we are one of the few bus operators in Scotland to offer it – and the only one to provide commercial tickets on the NEC card. We will continue to develop this technology and look forward to unveiling more products in the coming weeks, which I hope will encourage even more of our customers to discover the Discovr!’