2025: A Year in Review

Join us as we go over the stats and figures that have made our 10th anniversary year one to remember.

Personalised Travel Alerts drive app user growth

Thanks to initiatives such as Personalised Travel Alerts, our Monthly Active Users on Passenger apps exceeded 1.58 million in 2025, a 15% increase from 2024. That’s a whopping 2.2 million new app users in 2025!

Initially launched in 2016, favourites has evolved into a cornerstone of our rider experience. Fast forward to today, and this feature now drives our personalised travel alerts, ensuring riders stay updated about the changes that matter to them.

By delivering timely, personalised alerts tailored to each user, favourites keep notifications relevant and enhance the overall app experience. It’s another way we’re making journeys smoother and personal to everyone.

In-App Verifications and Travel Portal

In 2019, we extended our user verification system to enable customers to verify directly in the app. Before that, users had to take their ID to a Travel Centre to be checked by staff before they could access discounted tickets in the app.

This proved to be a game-changer, with GDPR-friendly in-app verifications soon becoming a critical tool for reducing fraud on bus networks and increasing revenue yield for operators. For Passenger, continued investment in the capability has helped us to reach over 100,000 verifications in a single year for the first time in 2025.

Passenger’s B2B solution continues to shine! In 2025, we processed over £11.2 million worth of tickets through the Travel Portal, representing a 26% increase in tickets sold through the platform.

Fares in Journey Planner

In 2024, we took journey planning to the next level by integrating fares into journey planning, making Passenger the first in the UK to bring BODS-mandated NeTEx data to life. Since then, riders have enjoyed accurate, real-world fares when planning their journeys, ensuring transparency and ease — especially as political interventions, such as the single-journey fare cap, have arrived and evolved.

For operators, this means a new level of confidence, too. Through Passenger Cloud, they can review how this data appears to riders, bridging the gap between complex datasets and a seamless passenger experience.

Commercial Innovation

One of the key drivers of Passenger’s success over the last decade has been its innovation in pricing. Traditionally, journey-planning services built into apps are priced on volume: the more queries made, the higher the cost. When Passenger launched its Cities capabilities in 2016, including journey planning, it enabled far more effective forecasting and control of the cost to deliver through digital channels.

Since early 2024, Passenger has made it simpler for mid-sized operators to access its market-leading technology. By unbundling platform capabilities, we’ve enabled operators to buy only the solutions their business needs. This more granular approach was launched as Capability Packs, and has enabled operators, such as Lynx Bus, to go live with new branded apps from Passenger in 2025.

myTrip provides mission-critical digital capabilities

The multi-operator national app, launched in October 2020, allows passengers to purchase tickets for bus routes across the UK via cashless options, track buses live, and view information about each bus. Launched amid the COVID pandemic, myTrip aimed to help smaller operators offer cashless payment options, bringing people back to the bus, getting people moving, and connecting communities in villages, towns, and cities across the country.

It has also provided ambitious operators, such as Coach Services in Norfolk and Red Group in Buckinghamshire, Hertfordshire and Oxfordshire, with a first step into digital commerce before moving to a fully featured white-label app and website solution with Passenger this year!

Passenger Cloud – A central system that manages everything

From the very beginning in 2015, the Passenger platform has provided access to a self-service admin system that manages not only the app’s content, but also an operator’s website. This cloud-native capability was launched at a time when locally installed software was commonplace, bringing fresh ideas to the transport industry.

An easy-to-access, comprehensive management system has enabled operators to take ownership of their data and customer interactions. Allowing those who have made focusing on delivering an exceptional experience for their customers a strategic priority, without the friction of third-party involvement.

Contactless journeys

In June 2022, Brighton & Hove buses and Metrobus became the first operators to provide a contactless payment history in their Passenger app, across every iOS and Android device. The feature shows riders they pay the best-value fare based on the journeys they’ve taken — all within its familiar app interface — highlighting the money saved.

Enhanced vehicle information

Building on a stalwart of Passenger capabilities, live vehicle tracking, we introduced Enhanced Vehicle Information early in 2020. This was designed to provide riders with a wealth of information, putting them far more in control than ever before. A hit with first-time users and accessibility advocates alike, the additional information helps users to know what to expect before the bus arrives. For many, being able to prepare in advance makes all the difference to the journey experience.

Looking ahead to 2026

With plenty of exciting new releases coming in 2026 (including Traveline!), we’re excited to continue working closely with operators and authorities to advance public transport customer experience over many years to come.

We wish you happy holidays and all the best for the new year ahead!