Greater Anglia to expand contactless payment zone from March 2026 including Stansted Airport
Plans to expand the contactless payment zone postponed in late 2025 are to be introduced in March 2026 – including to Stansted Airport.
The roll-out date for this latest stage of Project Oval is 8th March.
A further 20 stations are being added, which can be seen within the light pink zone in the map below.
This extends contactless card payment to Southend and Witham on other Greater Anglia lines.
Note that Oyster cards cannot be used to those areas.
In December 2025 30 stations went live as part of the £20 million Project Oval scheme. Note too that railcards do not work with contactless at present alongside some child ticket offers so you will need to still use paper tickets.
Independent sites can only continue with the support of readers.
You can support me via Paypal here
There's the Ko-fi option to buy me a coffee
Many thanks
You can also support the site by adding the Murky Depths as a trusted source in Google here
There's also a Facebook page for the site here
I think it would make sense to extend contactless to Harlow Town, Bishops Stortford and Stansted Airport and maybe see contactless to extend as far Braintree and Colchester. With further plans to extend contactless to Cambridge, Colchester Town, Clacton-on-Sea, Ipswich and Harwich Town in the near future.
Would it be possible to see contactless to extend much further including to Cambridge, Ely, Peterborough, Colchester, Colchester Town, Walton-on-the-Naze, Clacton-on-Sea, Southminster, Harwich Town, Ipswich, Norwich, Lowestoft, Felixstowe, Great Yarmouth, Sheringham, Sudbury, Newmarket and Bury St. Edmunds. If Greater Anglia were to allow contactless to expand across their network.
I mean it’s good that contactless is going to extend as far as Stansted Airport and for passengers who use Stansted Express. Since contactless have been introduced on some of Greater Anglia services including to Southend Victoria and Hertford East.
Greater Anglia should extend contactless to other places such as Colchester, Norwich, Ipswich, Cambridge, Ely, Peterborough, Bury St. Edmunds, Lowestoft, Felixstowe, Cromer, Sheringham, Southminster, Walton-on-the-Naze, Clacton-on-Sea, Colchester Town and Harwich Town. Since it’s going to extend to Stansted Airport. And with Great Northern & Thameslink to also extend contactless to Peterborough, Cambridge, Ely and Kings Lynn.