Why should I have to pay more for buses if I don't use a smartphone?

Owen Fraser, a bus user in Aberdeen, argues that transport pricing increasingly penalises people who do not use mainstream smartphone platforms. He praises Scotland’s scheme that gives free bus travel to under-22s with a physical national entitlement card as a model for non-digital access, but stresses a wider problem: cheaper fares and passes are being locked behind app-only purchases tied to Android or iOS. Fraser chooses a non-standard phone operating system to avoid the “always-online” models of the major platforms, and sees that preference translated directly into higher travel costs.

He gives a concrete example with operator First: a weekly pass purchasable on the bus exists, while a cheaper monthly pass is exclusive to the company’s app, leaving him out of pocket by £264 a year for not using that specific software. He calls this unacceptable amid the cost-of-living squeeze and warns that app-only schemes are not limited to transport - many supermarket loyalty programmes now follow the same pattern - so access to discounts and essential services should not depend on the computer software a customer uses.