Payments Capability

The Tap Converter (TC) service, procured in 2024/25, represents RDG's first step in developing central services to enable travel media agnostic (i.e. ITSO, barcode and cEMV) Pay As You Go (PAYG) on Rail. The Tap Converter is a central rail Account Based Ticketing (ABT) fares engine capable of accepting validation transactions (Taps) generated on rail validation devices (e.g. gates, platform validators and revenue inspection devices) and processing them into the customer journeys, fares and and/or best value cap or products that those Taps represent.

The TC is offered as a service that a regional PAYG ticketing solution can integrate with to enable the addition of rail to an existing regional PAYG scheme. In 2025, RDG contracted Tracsis as the supplier of the TC, with initial integrations underway to support PAYG ticketing in both Transport for Greater Manchester (TfGM) and Transport for West Midlands (TfWM) regions.

As part of TfGM Phase 1, the TC integration will enable cEMV acceptance on a limited number of rail routes within the Bee Network PAYG ticketing scheme from 2026. The Digital Ticketing Services (DTS) team within RDG shall run the TC as a central rail service, similar to the other industry services such as the ITSO Central Back Office (CBO), Rail Availability and Reservation Service (RARS) and the Passenger Assist (PA) system.

In the future, RDG expects to novate the contracts associated with the TC to an appropriate company within Great British Railways (GBR). RDG seeks to engage with the payments industry to inform the development of additional RDG services (following implementation of the Tap Converter) that will enable the further roll out PAYG acceptance on Rail as part of the Fares, Ticketing and Retail (FTR) programme.

This includes the addition of rail PAYG to other regions, and potentially also enabling customers who live and/or travel outside of established PAYG regions to make PAYG rail journeys using their cEMV card. RDG is exploring if procuring centralised payments capability for cEMV travel would facilitate the addition of rail to more regional PAYG ticketing solutions by accommodating these different technical design approaches, such as those looking to deliver multi-operator PAYG using cEMV by integrating with the Coral Broker. Pre-Authorisation or Nominal Authorisation Status Check), authorisation (including PAN Translation messaging where required) and settlement messaging in compliance with payment scheme cEMV mass or urban transit messaging specifications and policy requirements. o Card Not Present Merchant Initiated transactions; including MOTO and ECOMM authorisations in compliance with retail messaging specifications and policy requirements, and PAR request and return by either method, API request or terminal capture (where available). o Credential-on-File transactions. o Settlement messaging and associated payment and banking processes. o Management of chargeback requests and disputes. • Fraud, risk and non-compliant messaging management. • Ongoing compliance with EMV payment scheme messaging specifications and Merchant policy requirements. • Merchant reports, including but not limited to merchant statements, settlement reports, chargeback reports, fee summaries, periodic transaction summaries, reconciliation reports, compliance reports fraud and risk reports.