Stansted Airport railway station to accept London-style contactless payments
Another 45 railway stations, including Stansted Airport, have been shortlisted for the next expansion of London-style contactless payments.

The inclusion of Stansted Airport’s railway station was already expected to happen eventually, but it is notable because of the large number of passengers who have tried to use contactless payments there, assuming it already worked and have been caught out.
After all, with London in the name, it’s easy to understand why people assume London Stansted accepts London-style travel payments.
The transport watchdog London TravelWatch had previously said that in 2019, some 16,000 people had been handed penalty fares at the airport’s railway station after arriving without a paper ticket. They said that this was a similar situation to the one at Gatwick Airport before Oyster/Contactless acceptance was expanded south of London.
Since then there have been attempts to reduce accidental travel without a paper ticket, such as large warning signs by the ticket barrier at Liverpool Street station and plenty of audio announcements on the trains, but people are still being caught out.
Now, the Department for Transport (DfT) has confirmed that Stansted Airport station will be included in the next phase of its Project Oval expansion of contactless payments in the southeast of England.
The £27 million rollout, called Project Oval, is being funded by the DfT and carried out by TfL with in-station validation equipment carried out by Cubic Transportation Systems, who already provide the same kit to TfL.
The expansion will not include Oyster cards as the Oyster technology is now too old, just the newer bank card-based contactless payments. That mirrors how the Elizabeth line was extended to Reading, with Oyster only working as far as the edge of Zone 6, after which only bank card contactless will work.
Eventually, 230 stations across the southeast will accept contactless payments, 53 in the first phase, of which 47 stations will go live later this month. The second phase, for which the DfT has shortlisted 45 stations, will go live next year.
In the current rollout, contactless payments won’t accept concession fares or railcards, but the intention is to add those later.
The list of the next 45 stations to be included in the rollout:
Chiltern Railways
- Aylesbury
- Aylesbury Vale Parkway
- Great Missenden
- Little Kimble
- Monks Risborough
- Princes Risborough
- Saunderton
- Stoke Mandeville
- Wendover
Greater Anglia
- Billericay
- Bishop’s Stortford
- Chelmsford
- Harlow Mill
- Harlow Town
- Hatfield Peverel
- Hockley
- Ingatestone
- London Southend Airport
- Prittlewell
- Rayleigh
- Rochford
- Roydon
- Sawbridgeworth
- Southend Victoria
- Stansted Airport
- Stansted Mountfitchet
- Wickford
- Witham
Great Northern
- Knebworth
- Watton-at-Stone
- Welwyn North
Thameslink
- Harlington
- Leagrave
- Luton
Southern
- Ashtead
- Box Hill & Westhumble
- Dorking (Main)
- Dormans
- East Grinstead
- Hurst Green
- Leatherhead
- Lingfield
- Oxted
- Reigate
- Woldingham
Some stations are served by multiple operators — have listed them by GTR management.
I got caught out by this rushing for a train. £50 fine and they made a massive fuss out of it. They had laminated cards showing the signs at Liverpool St (ok but obviously I didn’t see them did I?). I wish they would have just charged me the ticket price rather than hitting me for £50. It was a bit unnecessary.
Will the London & SE Rail Map or the TfL Rail and Tube Map show the expanded contactless areas? At the moment it seems you have to go operator by operator to check and even then their maps aren’t up to date. Would be useful if it was all on one map.
That should take 10 minutes out of a journey to Stansted, unless they decide to still check every persons ticket in person at the airport. That always feels like a total overkill and borderline harassment.
Hopefully they’ll expand contactless payments to support the entire former ‘Network SouthEast’ area, though they might then have to work out how it can work for those with a Network Railcard.
Using the same area covered by the Network Railcard would exclude Peterborough. This might frustrate some Thameslink customers, though at I suspect LNER would quite like that station not to accept contactless payments.
I’m hoping that contactless travel is something that gets tackled within the rail nationalisation plans by the present Government. It surely cannot be something beyond the wit of man to produce a system linking the entire rail network that enables one to travel with a contactless card (like a newer and national “Oyster Card”) or something of that ilk that has a link to a payment card behind it and eligible railcards attached, too. Tickets loaded on in advance, season tickets (including season tickets and travelcards) plus simple affordable and unambigious fare structure…
I know I am probably being somewhat Utopian, but surely that’s not an impossible dream?
I’ve found it frustratingly difficult to find out what stations accept contactless. It’s not on the National Rail station page or the rail company station page. Links from the latter often go to generic TFL pages or to PDF maps that aren’t mobile friendly.
There’s a map and list of contactless stations at the National Rail website – search for pay as you go with contactless.
Very annoyingly they have excluded the Braintree branch line from Witham in this project, considering there’s only 4 stations this makes zero sense!
Where have you read that those four stations have been excluded from Project Oval?
This is definitely good progress, but the situation with Oyster, which now covers some stations (like Gatwick) and not others, does feel like an increasing mess for those travelling with children who don’t have banking facilities of their own. As contactless spread, paper tickets will likely become a rare thing (facilities to buy them are increasingly rare and neglected in London) – so some equivalent of the childs oyster pass (which provides concessionary travel but can currently be loaded with money to travel to selected places like Gatwick outside zone 6) that works on the growing contactless national rail payment system seems to be needed.