Digital Pay As You Go Trial FAQs

The Digital Pay-As-You-Go trial is available on selected routes between Derby, Nottingham, and Leicester.

If you’re travelling further, you’ll need a separate ticket for journeys outside the trial area.

The following stations are within the trial area:

• Leicester – Derby – Nottingham
• Nottingham
• Beeston
• Attenborough
• Spondon
• Long Eaton
• Derby
• East Midlands Parkway
• Loughborough
• Barrow-upon-Soar
• Sileby
• Syston
• Leicester

The locations in the East Midlands were selected as they best meet our requirements. They do not have existing PAYG schemes –such as the one in London and the Southeast, GWR in Bristol, or the proposed scheme in Greater Manchester – which means their impact can be tested and evaluated more effectively. No long-term decisions have been made for PAYG schemes in these areas.

Participants who take part in this trial will be able to use any train that passes through the trial route area. Participants should pay close attention to the boundaries of these areas and note that you will need a separate ticket to travel beyond them.

The DPAYG app can only be used for journeys started and completed within the trial network area

Adults who regularly travel between Leicester, Derby, or Nottingham can apply to join Digital Pay As You Go trial.

You’ll need to have a smartphone and be willing to share your location with the EMR app throughout the trial period. You’ll also need a valid debit or credit card associated with your account to pay for the journeys you take.

Just use Digital Pay As You Go whenever you travel between stations in the trial zone. Simply using the app will help us improve the experience – and you can share feedback any time via the app or support link.

In addition, you will be invited to take part in a survey shortly after you have downloaded the App, with the opportunity to take part in a follow-up interview and a final survey at the end of the trial.

Each person needs their own account to take part in the trial. If someone you’re travelling with wants to use Digital Pay As You Go, they’ll need to join the trial separately, or buy conventional tickets.

If you miss the sign-up date you may still be able to take part in the trials. Please contact us for more information.

• No, the trial is not an expansion of a traditional pay as you go with contactless scheme.
• These trials are testing a different type of technology, using a Digital Pay As You Go app on their mobile device. It is only available to a closed group of participants; this limited approach will allow us to test this technology on rail in England and consider how best it could be rolled out further.
• Participants will have their journeys determined using geolocation technology and other travel events.

We use location information from your smartphone while you are travelling to identify your journey and log your trips. This allows us to calculate your fare, no need to select a destination or buy a ticket in advance.

Yes – you’ll still be able to start and end your journey without a signal. Just make sure your location permissions are enabled.

Your location data is collected while you’re travelling and used to calculate fares. It’s not shared with third parties or available to other features in the app. Our privacy policy contains more information about how we use your data.

The app runs quietly in the background during your journey and has minimal impact on battery life during use. We’ll be monitoring this closely throughout the trial too.

Digital Pay As You Go ticketing has been trialled in other parts of Europe, including successful pilots in Switzerland and central Scotland. These trials allowed passengers to travel without booking in advance, with fares calculated automatically based on the journeys they made.

This trial aims to simplify the passenger experience even further – using location information from your smartphone to detect which train you’re on and automatically calculate your fare. It’s the first time a trial of this kind has been tested in England.

This is a small-scale, time-limited trial designed to explore innovative alternatives to traditional contactless PAYG systems.

The aim is to understand how we can make rail travel easier for passengers, assess how location-based technology could work alongside existing schemes, and gather feedback from users about their experience.

• The purpose of these trials is to test location-based DPAYG ticketing for rail in England for the first time, assess passenger responses and understand how it could work alongside traditional contactless schemes.
• No decisions have been made about rolling out Digital Pay As You Go more widely. This trial is about learning what works best for passengers and the rail network.

When you're ready to travel and near a station in the Digital Pay As You Go trial area, just open the EMR app and choose the PAYG tab. We’ll detect your departure station – then check in to start your journey. A barcode ticket will be generated automatically for travel.

When you arrive at your destination, check out to end your journey in the app. We’ll calculate the fare based on the journeys you’ve made at the end of the day.

If you forget to end your journey in the app, we’ll send you a notification to remind you so we can calculate your fare. Don’t worry – you’ll be able to review all your trips and get help through the app if needed.

If you start and end your journey within the same station without travelling, you will not be charged for your journey.

The app works on most iOS and Android smartphones. You’ll need to have location services set to ‘always on’.

• These trials will use Global Positioning System (GPS) based technology on participants’ phones. This will track your train journey and your fare.
• For ticket inspections and to go through ticket barriers, a unique barcode will be available within the app to be scanned. Your phone will need access to the internet and enough battery to last the length of your journey.

• You’ll pay a simple one-way fare based on how far you travel
• A return is just twice the price of a one-way ticket
• Daily cap: travel as much as you like for no more than £23
• Weekly cap: you’ll never pay more than £73 a week within the trial zone
• If a weekly season ticket is cheaper, we’ll apply that fare automatically
• Once linked in the app, railcard discounts are applied automatically to all eligible journeys
• You can view your full journey history and spending in the app at any time 

• The proposed fares changes will only impact participants taking part in the trial. All other passengers will be unaffected.
• For participants, the decision about which ticket to buy will be simplified, by applying single-leg pricing. This means that fares have been adjusted so that singles are priced, in most cases, at half of a return fare. Participants will be offered only one Peak and one Off-Peak price.
• One ticket per account and non-transferable to another person out of the trial.

Yes – just link your railcard in the app and we’ll automatically apply the discount to all eligible journeys.

You can use the following railcards with Digital Pay As You Go:

• 16–25 Railcard
• 26–30 Railcard
• Senior Railcard
• Disabled Person’s Railcard
• Veteran’s Railcard

For clarity, we confirm that the discounted fare available to wheelchair users and/or visually impaired persons, and an adult companion (often referred to as the “Special Disabled Fare”), is not available to use in connection with the DPAYG trial.

• Single-leg pricing is an important step in making sure fares are simpler and meet passenger needs. It involves pricing Single fares, in most cases, at half the price of a Return fare.
• It will allow participants to more easily mix and match between ticket types, delivering simpler, more flexible tickets that are better value.
• For example, where a return fee is set at £10, single leg pricing will be £5 each way

Peak times will remain consistent with existing restrictions on the trial routes. Additionally, participants will benefit from for some form of fares capping based on their journeys.

• Participants will benefit from Daily and Weekly (Monday to Sunday) capping.
• Daily caps will limit fees to £23 within the trial network on permitted routes
• Weekly caps will limit fees to £73 Monday to Sunday within the trial network on permitted routes.

If you believe you have been charged incorrectly, contact our customer support team who will investigate and correct any charges where appropriate.

A daily journey which hasn't reached any cap would be classed as a single ticket for that journey and compensated according to the normal calculations for single tickets.

Daily journeys that have been rolled up to the cap would be assumed to have 2 journeys so divided by 2 to get the journey price then the normal calculation worked out on this single fare.

For tickets that are rolled up to a 7-day season ticket the calculation of any compensation would be the same as any other method of purchase.

For the weekly Capped fare, we would divide the cost of the ticket by 10 to a cost of a journey then compensated according to the normal calculations for single tickets.

If you are delayed in reaching your destination because of a delay or cancellation of a train service, you may apply for compensation for this delay.

To complete your delay repay claim you must submit a journey history screenshot from the App showing where you began and ended your journey and the cost of your ticket. Alternatively a copy of the delay repay claim PDF which can be created within the app. This needs to be submitted in email to the Digital Pay As You Go – Customer Support team. They can be reached using the email address [email protected] and using the email subject as Digital Pay As You Go Train. The claim will then be submitted through the Delay Repay system once the ticket roll up period has ended.

If you choose not to travel, you may abort your travel as described above.

You may not apply for a refund of your ticket for any journeys.

If you believe you have been charged the wrong fare, you should contact us through the App including details of your expected fare. Where we agree with the adjustment, we will arrange any refund required.

It is important that some products and services are independently evaluated. The Department for Transport (DfT) has appointed the research company Ipsos and its approved partners to do this.

Evidence from this evaluation will help to inform the development of future policy to support PAYG.

Part of the evaluation is to check if the PAYG feature provided by East Midlands Railway (EMR) in partnership with Trainline provides a more seamless experience when travelling. To do this, Ipsos needs to access data on your travel behaviours, how you use the app (if you are selected to download it) and some demographic data. More information on this is provided below.

If you choose to participate in the trial, Ipsos will access the data provided by EMR and Trainline. Your data will be used by Ipsos and its approved partners solely for the purposes of this research study.

By taking part, you will be given the opportunity to download the EMR App and be given full access to the Digital Pay As You Go feature. In addition, you will be invited to take part in a survey shortly after you have downloaded the App, with the opportunity to take part in a follow-up interview and a final survey at the end of the trial.

If you provide your consent, we will share your email address with Trainline so Trainline can activate your user account to have access to the DPAYG functionality within the EMR app. Trainline are the supplier of the East Midlands Railway App along with the Digital Pay As You Go Functionality for the trial.

If you provide your consent, EMR will share the responses you provided in this registration page with Ipsos. They will not share your name or email address.

If you provide your consent, EMR will share 12 months of travel history prior to the trial starting with Ipsos, as well as your travel history during the trial. EMR will also share your data about your use of the Digital Pay As You Go Functionality within the EMR app with Ipsos. More information is provided in the section ‘What data will we be accessing as part of this evaluation?’.

By agreeing to take part you will help the DPAYG feature provided by EMR to be independently evaluated. This will provide confidence and credibility to society, the UK Government and industry about which products or services are most effective at enabling DPAYG.

• Potential benefits for you:
• Single leg pricing resulting in the best fares.
• Flexibility in your travel, just turn up and go.
• Daily and Weekly price caps to help limit spending.
• Automatic season ticket allocation.

With your consent, EMR will share data with Ipsos, our independent research partner, so we can evaluate the DPAYG trial.

• Age
• Gender
• Ethnicity
• Occupational status
• Frequency of travel
• Reason of travel
• Season ticket use
• Usual method of purchase
• Railcard membership
• Disability
• App usage data related to the EMR app:
  • Logins/visits to the app
  • Use of sub features, i.e. number of clicks/taps on each feature (e.g. taps on journey recommender page, dispute page, etc. across all sub features of the app), before, during and after trip is made.
  • Journeys made through the DPAYG feature.
  • Click aways, aborted journeys, time on tasks and number of taps in a process.
  • Dispute data: overall number, proportion of journeys, proportions of undetermined that result in a dispute, type of dispute, resolution, whether max fare applied.
  • Selection of data points around fraud (e.g. journey flagged as fraudulent, fraud score)
• Travel patterns (historic and during the trial)
  • We will share travel patterns in the 12 months before the trial start and travel while the trial is running.
  • Data will be provided in the following ways:
    • Number of journeys within the trial zone vs. outside it.
    • Number of journeys between defined station categories (e.g. major hubs vs. local stops).
    • Number of journeys between urban and rural /rural and rural / urban and urban stations.
    • The data will be broken down by peak v off peak travel, weekday v weekend, rail card usage, whether the trip is in the trial route area, mean/mode of start and end time of trip, and mean price paid.

We do not anticipate any disadvantages to you from Ipsos and its approved partners accessing your data for the purposes of evaluating the trial.

Your participation in the research trial will be kept strictly confidential. Ipsos commits to safeguarding your privacy and will only share anonymised data with the Department for Transport (DfT). Confidentiality will be respected subject to legal constraints and professional guidelines.

No, the data accessed by Ipsos and its approved partners will never be sold to third parties and will only be used for the purposes described here.

The Department for Transport intend to publish findings of the evaluation on the GOV.UK website. Individuals will not be identified in any publication and all data will be reported anonymously.

The Department for Transport (DfT) is the Data Controller of the research data. DfT’s lawful basis for processing this data is performance of a task in the public interest, specifically Article 6.1(e): processing is necessary for the performance of a task carried out in the public interest or in the exercise of official authority vested in the controller. DfT will not have access to your personal data and Ipsos will process your personal data to conduct the research.

EMR are Independent Data Controllers for this research, and will be sharing your personal information in a pseudonymised form to invite you to take part and pseudonymised data from the app with Ipsos based on your consent.

Ipsos is a Data Processor acting on behalf of DfT. Ipsos requires a legal basis to process your personal data associated with the management of any incentive they offer for completion of the survey. Ipsos relies on your consent to send you information relating to any incentive.

Ipsos will keep your data secure, store your contact details separately from data used for research, and minimise the processing of personal data wherever possible, in accordance with GDPR regulations.

Privacy policies:

DfT’s privacy policy has more information about your rights in relation to your data, how to complain and how to contact the Data Protection Officer. You can view it at: https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/department-for-transport/about/personal-information-charter

EMR’s privacy policy: Privacy & Cookie Policy | Our policies | EMR

If you have any queries about how DfT and/or Ipsos processes your data for this project, or if you wish to withdraw your consent, you can contact them using the details provided below.

You can do this by using any of the contact details provided below. You do not need to give a reason to do so, and you can withdraw at any time. If you withdraw from the trial, all parties including Ipsos and its approved partners will delete any identifying information held relating to you.

Please now read the Data Protection Privacy Notice presented on the next screen to understand how your data will be kept secure. Please complete the Consent Form above if you would like to participate in this trial.

Ipsos are not responsible for the DPAYG feature provided by EMR. If you wish to make a complaint, you should inform EMR using the contact details provided.

If you have any queries or wish to make a complaint about how DfT and/or Ipsos processes your data for this project, you can contact them using the details provided below. If you feel that your complaint has not been handled to your satisfaction, you have the right to lodge a formal complaint with the UK Information Commissioner's Office (ICO). Full details may be accessed on the complaints section of the ICO's website: https://ico.org.uk/make-a-complaint/ .

EMR
Email: [email protected]
Website:www.eastmidlandsrailway.co.uk&nbsp ;
Project: 25-040544-01 Evaluation of DPAYG Trials
Address: Data Protection Officer, East Midlands Railway
EMR HQ Locomotive House, Locomotive Way, Derby, DE24 8PU.


Ipsos
Email: [email protected]
Website: www.ipsos.com&nbsp ;
Project: 25-040544-01 Evaluation of DPAYG Trials
Address: Data Protection Officer, Compliance Department Ipsos (market research) Limited and Ipsos MORI UK Limited
3 Thomas More Square
London E1W 1YW

Department for Transport
Email: [email protected]
Website: Department for Transport - GOV.UK
Project: 25-040544-01 Evaluation of DPAYG Trials
Address: Data Protection Officer
Department for Transport
3rd Floor
One Priory Square
Hastings, East Sussex TN34 1EA