Southeastern introduces UK first with new digital season tickets

Southeastern, one of the UK’s busiest passenger train operators, has introduced digital season tickets – known as sTickets – allowing customers to quickly buy a season ticket and store it on their smartphone.

sTickets are available to buy through the Southeastern website and app, providing a secure, convenient and queue-free way of buying a season ticket for travel in south-east London, Kent and East Sussex.

Their introduction is part of Southeastern’s goal of providing a better, more reliable and sustainable railway and, in turn, attracting more people to travel by train.  In fact, Southeastern recently saw its busiest day since 2019 (pre-pandemic) with 394,000 entries and exits at Southeastern’s London terminals.

sTickets are suitable for passengers making the same journey regularly, such as travelling to work or for education. They are available to buy from the latest version of the Southeastern app and the Southeastern website.

 sTickets are sent straight to a passenger’s phone and stored in the Southeastern app and are ready to use immediately after purchase. As they’re purchased directly from Southeastern, as opposed to a third party, there are no booking fees and you can use the same app for up-to-the-minute travel information as well.

eTickets remain available for non-season travel and are stored on the passenger’s digital device. They are quickly becoming Southeastern’s most popular ticket format, with over 700,000 sold between 11^th November and 8^th December, the equivalent of over 2,500 per day. 

In addition, Southeastern has recently upgraded all 292 ticket vending machines across the network to allow customers to purchase tickets between any two stations in England, Scotland and Wales. Previously, customers could only purchase tickets for journeys which started from the location of the vending machine.  This will make it easier and more convenient for customers to plan and book journeys in advance.

“sTickets are a fantastic new product and will help many of our regular customers to save time and make it even easier to buy their season ticket and keep it safe and secure on their smartphone,” said Alicia Andrews, Southeastern’s Commercial Director.

“You don’t need to use a ticket machine or queue up at a station – you can simply buy your ticket on your phone and it is ready to go straight away. sTickets also have new in-built technology to prevent fraud and ensure they cannot be shared,” Andrews added.

“We are always looking for new ways to support our growing railway and becoming the first train operator in the UK to accept and retail Flexi tickets as sTicket is another step towards providing a better, more reliable and sustainable railway and are available right now,” Andrews concluded.

The following tickets are available on sTickets:

• Weekly Season tickets
• Monthly Season tickets
• Custom period Season tickets (anything longer than a Monthly and shorter than an Annual)
• Annual Season tickets
• Flexi Season tickets
• Child Season tickets

sTickets are available on the majority of Southeastern routes, except where the ticket allows travel on TfL services. They are also available for non-Southeastern journeys where the relevant Train Operating Company has enabled them.