Swift card help & FAQs

Swift is a smartcard for buses, trams and trains in the West Midlands. It can store season tickets, day tickets or cash to allow you to easily pay for your travel. Simply load with cash or your preferred ticket and place it on the scanner every time you get on the bus! See our Swift page for more information and to help you select the right ticket for you.

Swift cards can either have subscription passes loaded onto them, ticket bundles such as our Flexifares or credit added so that you can ‘Pay As You Go’. See our Swift page for more detail.

Yes, your Swift card is your ticket! You will need to place it on the scanner every time you get on the bus.

Once you have bought your Swift product, you will need to 'collect' it to your card. This loads your product, whether it’s a season ticket or Pay As You Go credit, onto the actual Swift card. 

There are two ways for you to do this:

1. A Swift collector
2. The Swift app

See below for more help with  the Swift app and Swift collectors. 

You can buy any of our tickets available on bus, using Pay As You Go. You'll be issued with a paper ticket once you've paid for the ticket using the credit on your card. 

You can see how much money is left on your card when you hold it on the scanner. It will also be printed out onto the ticket that you will get. You can also download the Swift app for Apple and Android devices, when you hold the card to the back of the device, it will show you how much money is left on the card. 

Yes! If you have a Pay As You Go card you can select ‘auto top-up’ during the application process. This means when the credit on your Swift card drops below £10, the next time you scan it on the bus it will automatically top-up with your pre-chosen amount. We also have 1 week and 4 week ticket subscriptions, this means that a few days before your ticket expires we take payment and push the next ticket to your Swift card.

Activate your ticket or top-up from wherever you are using the Swift app on your mobile or tablet. The app is free to download from the App store and Google Play store and works on most modern mobiles and devices.

Step 1: Open up the app and place your Swift card onto the back of the device, make sure you hold your card onto the back of your device, until the process is finished. 

Step 2: If you already have any products loaded onto your card, these will be displayed on the app.

Step 3: Keep your Swift card in place and the app will automatically update your card with any waiting/pending tickets.

Step 4: Once the update is complete the screen will show your new ticket, you are now good to go!

A Swift collector allows you to load the product, credit or top-up that you have bought onto you Swift card. There are 80 of these located in various places across the West Midlands and available to use at any time of day.

Also available on Network West Midlands website 

Some products can be upgraded or downgraded, to discuss your options please contact us and a member of our team will be happy to assist you. 

1. Please try your card on another bus before contacting us for a replacement.
2. Download the Swift collector app for Apple or Android and check to see if it works on there.
3. If you are near a travelshop, they will be able to test your card for you and issue you a replacement if needed.
4. Once you have tried all of the above, if your card is still not working, please contact us for a replacement.
5. If your card is cracked or damaged there will be a £5 replacement fee.

If you have lost your card please contact us and we can arrange a replacement to be sent out to your home address. There is a £5 replacement fee for our Swift cards

Please see our subscription FAQ’s for help with this.