Taking the bus or train just got a lot easier for commuters across the country. The tech giant recently expanded its tap-to-pay feature to more locations, making it simple to hop on public transportation without buying a physical ticket. You can now use your smart device to breeze through the turnstiles in fourteen different major cities across the nation, skipping the ticket machines entirely.
Express mode lets you tap and ride without unlocking your phone
The Apple Pay transit feature is currently live in Atlanta, the Bay Area, Boston, Chicago, Dallas, Houston, Los Angeles, New York, Orange County, Philadelphia, Portland, San Diego, Seattle, and Washington, DC. While places like New York have had this for a while, Apple just brought Dallas and Houston on board in June 2026.
If you ride in these areas, you can set up a handy feature called Express Mode. This setting lets you pay your fare instantly. You do not need to wake up your iPhone or use face scanning to get past the gate. You just tap the device and keep walking. Even better, if your battery dies, the phone holds enough reserve power to work at the turnstile for up to five more hours.
Different cities have different rules for how you pay. In Dallas, you can link any standard contactless credit or debit card to ride. In places like Houston, you need to add a specific virtual transit card to your digital wallet first. You can also use a smartwatch to pay if it runs a compatible version of watchOS. This setup works on the Series 1 and newer watches.
Before you head out on your commute, it is a good idea to check what your specific city requires. Grabbing a virtual transit card or setting a default payment method in advance will save you from scrambling at the station. It is a small change that makes moving around the city much faster.
