If you’re not yet ready to commit to buying regular weekly/monthly bus passes, and prefer to just tap and go on buses with your contactless bank card or smartphone, you’ll have probably faced the barrier that your fares only get capped if you travel on buses from the same operator.
That’s fine for most people who only use one operator’s services anyway, but if you’d like to enjoy flexible capping across all bus operators, then TfWM have the solution in Swift Go.
Swift Go is here to cut out the confusion. It takes away the need to understand which ticket to buy for your journey. A smart product designed for everyone including those who don’t travel the traditional, Monday – Friday commute.
Once you’ve set up an account, choose how you want to pay, and use your Swift card each time you travel on the bus or tram. At the end of each day, we’ll calculate the cost and cap the price based on the number of journeys you’ve made.
You can only use Swift Go on the tram and most buses. You cannot use it on the train.
Swift Go is useful if you travel with lots of different operators. If you only travel with one operator, it might be easier for you to use contactless payment cards instead.
When travelling on the network, look out for the Swift Go stickers on your bus to see whether you can use your Swift Go.
View the full list of price caps and operators who accept Swift Go here.
Swift Go – Transport for West Midlands
If you don’t have one already, you’ll need to apply for a free Swift photocard, upload a passport-style photo, and then choose to link your debit/credit card, or add funds to a balance that you can top-up as and when you like.
Your Swift card will then be sent to you and then you just use it on buses and trams instead of your contactless bank card. Tap the card on boarding and your fares will be capped at 1 day, 3 day or 1 week nBus rates, depending on when and how often you travel.
Your questions about Swift Go capping, answered.
Capping:
When does the capping week start and end?
- Your capping week starts on a Sunday and runs until Saturday. If you were to travel from Friday – Tuesday you would be travelling across 2 different weeks.
What time does a new capping day start and end?
- Your capping day starts between 02:00 am and ends at 01:59 am the next day.
When will you charge me?
- If you use our Auto-Pay way of paying for Swift Go, any charges calculated for journeys that have been undertaken during the “Capping Week” (per day or multiple days) will be deducted from the stored payment card in your Online Swift Account on a weekly basis each Sunday.
- If you use Auto-Pay and change your payment card details, you will immediately be charged any outstanding balance. You will not be overcharged as this will be deducted from what you are charged on the usual Sunday.
- If you use Top-Up only, with no other payment methods saved to your Swift account your Swift Go balance will be charged daily.
What happens when my Swift Go balance is below £0?
- If your Swift Go account is in arrears you have until 8 pm the next day to pay your debt, otherwise, we will block your account.
- If you have both a bank card on your account and a balance loaded to your Swift Go account, we will charge your balance first but will charge your bank card once your balance reaches £0.
What will happen if I don’t reach a 3-day cap?
- If you do not reach a cap, you will be charged for each journey individually.
If you only ever use your contactless bank card or smartphone on one operator’s services, or if you already have a Swift card loaded with a weekly or monthly nBus pass, then clearly Swift Go is not for you.
However for those less frequent passengers who would like the flexibility of “tap-and-go” capped fares when travelling across multiple bus operators’ services, as well as the West Midlands Metro tram service, it would clearly be an advantage to sign up for and use a Swift Go card instead.
Some people may not see it as ideal, but it is a solution to a problem that has been bothering TfWM for some time, which I wrote about earlier this year:
