Tickets, fares and contactless

Regular travellers and visitors can save money by purchasing a Go smart travel card.

Go Explore cards provide unlimited travel on our bus and rail services. These are available for 1, 3, 5 or 7 days. We also offer Go Places multi-journey cards for people who frequently take the same bus journey and Go cards to provide Day Savers, unlimited travel on all bus vannin services for 1, 3, 5 or 7 consecutive days.

Go cards are available online or from the Welcome Centre in Douglas Sea Terminal and main stations. Please see the Go cards page for more details.

Bus and rail tickets

Buses

• Single tickets are available on the bus from the driver. Please try to have the correct fare as the driver may not always have change. See the fares guide for:
  • Sample bus fares - south
  • Sample bus fares - north and west 
  • Sample bus fares - Douglas and East
• Return bus tickets are not available
• One Day Saver bus tickets and one day Go Explore tickets (unlimited bus and rail travel) are available from bus drivers and main stations.

Short hop fare

For bus passengers who only make short urban journeys, the short hop 60p fare enables you to board and travel up to 3 stops.

Bus Saver

Available from the bus driver for one day's travel by bus - adult £7, child £3.50.

Trains and trams

• Single and return tickets are available from all manned railway stations.
• Manx Electric Railway tickets can also be obtained from the tram conductor.
• Annual resident Go Platinum cards provide unlimited travel on the railways for one year from issue whilst the Go Rail Card provides 50% discount on rail fares. See Annual cards for more details.
• Return rail tickets can be used for travel on the corresponding bus service.

Standard rail fares for the Manx Electric Railway, Snaefell Mountain Railway and Isle of Man Steam Railway can be found in the downloadable documents on this page.

Contactless

More ways to pay- Contactless

You can now use your contactless bank card to pay for bus tickets as well as your smartphone or your smartwatch as we accept Apple Pay and Android Pay.

You can pay with your contactless bank cards on any bus vannin buses.

What contactless is

Contactless is the fast, easy and secure way to pay for transactions under £30. All you need is a contactless-enabled card.

Why you’ll love contactless on bus vannin Services

• No cash? No problem! With contactless you don’t need to worry about finding change to pay for your bus ticket.
• Pay fast – it takes under a second for a contactless payment to register.
• It’s secure – contactless payments have the same level of protection as Chip and PIN payments.

How contactless works

Paying with contactless works just the same as when paying with cash. Just ask for the ticket you want and tell the driver you’re paying with contactless. When prompted, place your card or device on the reader and wait for the ‘beep’ just like when you pay on the high street. Your ticket will be issued and you can then find your seat.

If you've got a contactless card but haven't used it yet, you might need to make a chip and PIN payment elsewhere before you can use it for contactless payments.

If you are unfortunate enough for an error to occur, the driver will cancel the transaction please call +44 1624 697400 or email publictransport@gov.im and our customer service team and ensure  a refund is processed. 

What you can use contactless for

Any ticket that you can buy on the bus is available to be paid for with your contactless card. You can also pay for a group of passengers travelling together as well.  As long as the transaction is under £30.

Top-ups for smartcards are unfortunately not able to be paid for with contactless due to using the same reader for both the smartcard and payment card. If you need to top-up, why not go online to get the best fare?

Get the best fare

Contactless is a great way to pay if you don’t have the exact change in your wallet or purse, but there are many ways to pay and to get the best fare! Please see our Go card range.

If you know you will be travelling lots with us, then getting a smartcard will give you the best long term fare and can be topped up online meaning you always know that you have your travel to hand.

Using a Non-UK contactless card

Most contactless cards or devices issued outside the UK can be used to buy tickets on bus vannin services. Please note we do not accept Maestro or American Express.

How long it takes for the transaction to go through

Its just like a normal card payment, and generally the money will come out of your account within 24 hours. 

Viewing how many trips you have used on contactless

You can view all your bus vannin transactions by using the link: https://mytrips.uk.littlepay.com/isle-of-man. This will direct you to our partners littlepay who provide the platform for IoM Transport which enables contactless cards payments.