Cash on Tap: Will you start paying with your EE phone to travel around London and leave your Oyster card at home?

From today EE customers living in London can use their phones to pay for bus travel – just tap your handset onto the Oyster card reader and away you whizz! (Assuming you’re not stuck in a traffic jam after 30 seconds of movement, which most London buses are.)

According to The Next Web, any EE users who have downloaded the brand’s Cash on Tap app will be able to take advantage of the new quick, easy and contactless payment system. Unfortunately that means some bang up-to-date devices, like the HTC One MB and LG G3 won’t be compatible just yet, but EE promises that the app will work on more than 500,000 of its customers’ phones by the end of 2014.

So it looks like it’ll cost you exactly the same as using an Oyster card, it’s much easier than carrying your Oyster card with you too AND it’ll mean an end to those ‘OMG WHERE DID I PUT MY OYSTER CARD??! WHAT’S THE POINT IN ANYTHING! WHERE IS IT?! IS IT HERE? IS IT THERE?… Oh it was in my pocket all along’ moments of absolute terror.

But will you be downloading the app and travelling with nothing but your phone from this week? Well, even if it doesn’t catch on elsewhere it certainly seems to be the future of travel in London given that from September EE will be bringing its Cash on Tap service to the underground, overground and DLR.

We don’t know about you, but we’re all downloading the app as soon as we’ve hit ‘publish’…

Image via raver_mikey’s flickr.