TAP LA
July 20, 2024
More About TAP LA
- Make your travel safe and easy with contactless payment and card management.
- Use your Android phone to tap and pay when you board. You don't even have to wake up your phone!
- Purchase a transit pass or Stored Value for any agency in Los Angeles County.
- Enjoy flexible payment options including credit/debit cards, account cash and Google Pay.
- Manage multiple cards in your TAP account.
- Supports reduced fares for seniors, students, persons with disabilities and low-income riders.
- Access multimodal programs such as Metro Bike Share.
- Use Trip Tools to plan trips, find nearby transit options, view real-time arrivals and save favorite destinations and stops.
- Enjoy the benefits of a TAP account, such as Balance Protection, card management, discounts, promotions, transaction history and friendly customer service.
- Accepted on 27 transit systems in LA County including:
Angels Flight Railway
Antelope Valley Transit Authority (AVTA)
Baldwin Park Transit
Beach Cities Transit
Burbank Bus
Carson Circuit
Compton Renaissance Transit System
Culver CityBus
Foothill Transit
Gardena GTRANS
Glendale Beeline
Glendora Transportation Division
Huntington Park Transit Unlimited
LA County Department of Public Works
LADOT Transit
Lawndale Beat
Norwalk Transit
Palos Verdes Peninsula Transit Authority
Pasadena Transit
Santa Clarita Transit
Torrance Transit
Eligible users should upgrade to Android OS 13 or greater to ensure the best experience.
TAP App v1.26.89 New Features/Enhancements
1. Fare capping status feature
-View your LA Metro fare capping progress in “Card Info.”
2. Promo code enhancement
- Add a new virtual card to your phone and redeem a promo code in one transaction.
- Supports LA Metro’s GoPass program participants and students using Long Beach Transit.
3. Zero-dollar checkout enhancement
- When you purchase a discounted fare product or redeem a promo code and the shopping cart net total is $0, no payment method is required to check out.
Latest Version
1.26.89
July 20, 2024
TAP LA
Travel & Local
Android
273,430
Free
net.metro.taprider
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User Reviews
whosyne hk
1 year ago
Useful but need upgrading. Miss the stops on the bus because there is no proper indication of where the next stop is. Cant hear the comentator. To see where you are on a small map is very difficult. You need to zoom and zoom and zoom until you see your live location. Once the bus move yiu need to zoom out of the small map to know where you are heading.
Ilya Alekseyeff
4 years ago
Awfully executed. I tried to add an exist mg card with stored value to the phone. I entered the number without problems. But the process failed at the next step when I tried to add the card by placing it against the phone as instructed. I gave up after trying six times. And even when I bought a card directly from the app, 80% of the time the metro scanners said that the card was invalid. Never trust government agencies with new technology.
Matthew Cain
1 year ago
Works great! Love how easy it is to load money on my card. Sometimes the machine doesn't always read the phone but the bus operators are nice about it. However, it become somewhat of a problem for the train stations if it doesn't read. Metro you need to make sure the stations tap readers work properly.
Daniel
3 years ago
It works well in terms of transit fare payment. UX is good enough. 2 ⭐ because the app is really obtrusive/buggy for me. Everytime I use my phone during the 2h ride window, the app tries to launch itself on top of whatever I am doing. It renders my device barely usable for 2h! Another, less annoying bug (or feature?), it always appears second in the recent apps list, regardless of when used last. I apreciate that this app exists. Fix that, and make the jump from barely usable to great!
Kathryn Gould
2 years ago
Works OK, but messed up my phone. I travel to LA frequently for work, so downloaded app to help get around. Back home, not using app at all, suddenly phone is constantly buzzing and flashing like it's taking screenshots. Sometimes it would interrupt what I was doing on the phone and make it unusable for a while! Finally I noticed tap app kept opening for no reason. Removed permissions, force closed, the app STILL opened itself and caused problems. Uninstalled. Problem solved.
Bryan Bischoff
2 years ago
Miserable app! Not only does it not update bus times like Google maps does but scanning with my phone almost never works! I'll be transferring my funds to a plastic tap card that I know I can trust and use Google maps for my directions. Update: The instructions for this app says you don't even have to wake your phone to use Tap but this is not true at all. Not only does the app have to be running but it has to literally be the active open screen on your phone to work.
Kay Solo
2 years ago
Decent in theory but it needs work. There are many frustrating aspects of this app; for one example there's a card in my account from another phone. I want to remove it, but it can only be removed from the phone it was added on, aka the phone I no longer have. I keep having to swipe past a card I can no longer use or add funds to. Some little things like that. I'd love to see this improved upon, hopefully the app isn't dead.
Michelle R
3 years ago
Would be really helpful if it were more reliable. Recently the app keeps hijacking my phone and opens randomly while vibrating my phone (when I haven't used it in days or weeks). I also still have a pending $ reload from a couple months ago that I don't know how to get out of limbo. Reload transactions need to be processed more quickly in general. Edit: Whoa, the review a few down nailed the issue! The issue is triggered when the phone is near my CC in my purse! Ugh!
Jess E
3 years ago
It works most of the time. I'm not sure if it's the machines on the bus or the app but it'll say the card is invalid and five tries later it'll take it. I have a Galaxy S10 so I don't think it's the phone. Also the app recently started opening and closing itself so when I'm using the phone it'll repeatedly flash on my screen. It's annoying but not completely useless. Might uninstall after I use up the balance.
Jonathan Capone
3 years ago
This app barely works. The trip feature almost never works and since the payment feature doesn't work either, i get on all of the buses for free. The entire development team needs to be replaced and so does their manager, because this app is a disaster. I wanted to edit this to indicate that it's not my phone that is a problem. I've had the same problem on multiple phones including a brand new one and I'm no tech novice.
Leumas
3 years ago
Works, on occasion.. It's horribly optimized, takes too long to boot up for such a simple app, it chuggs along when it does, and it still has a chance to not work. Currently dealing with not being able to use the app because I turned off my screen mid transaction and it locked up my account. The idea of the app is great, but this sloppy execution completely ruins it's ease of convenience. Just another thing that gives public transport a terrible reputation. Edit: I have a Pixel 4a w/ android 12
Nawaf A
2 years ago
Horrible app. It keeps running in the background on its own. For some reason, it keeps beeping as if I am tapping it at a station. Although, nothing is around the phone. It is very random but happens frequently. Which led me to uninstall the app. I installed the app back to use it and was unable to use my card, because I didn't remove my virtual card from the phone before uninstalling. Other than the two issues above which makes the app unusable for me, it's a great app and convenient.
Brandon Hernandez
2 years ago
Absolute trash. Not ready for complete use yet. Like all the other reviews say, it barely works most of the time and I'm on a high end galaxy phone. Aside from the tap pay simply refusing to work often on buses, the metro day/week passes and stored value may or may not take too long to appear. But even ignoring this, the app barely functions anyway, which is super disappointing. You can manage your balance for your physical tap card and add pass/fare to it, but that's about it. Please improve!
Justin Thomason
1 year ago
What a monumental piece of trash! Installed it and followed the instructions to create a new account. So far so good. I added money to the account - again, super easy. But guess what - no matter what I do, IT DOES NOT WORK AS A TAP CARD!!! You had one job, and you failed MISERABLY. And yes - NFC is on. I tried it from the lock screen (which the FAQ says should work). I looked in my Google Wallet - no card and no way to add one. I tried opening the app to the card before scanning; no dice.
Shadow Marlo
1 year ago
It's 2024, some TAP machines are still having problems with NFC. Some of them will not work compared to physical card. Also, the fare is very slow progress when added to a plastic card, you have to wait for a few minutes or an hour. Then, it's in "pending" state until the card is tapped at a gate or validator. LA Metro is still behind in technology.
Moonlight Too
1 year ago
*Another update: it logged me out and now none of my cards show up. The developers need to get on this asap! Update: this is the second virtual card I have that is now unusable. It's wasted money now. ** Works well if you're using it to reload a physical card. The digital card I bought became unusable and I can't even remove it. There needs to be a remove tap card option, and adding shouldn't require a physical card each time. Regardless, I'm able to add fare and see history of transactions.
Jeremy Garcia
1 year ago
I've used transit in many cities (SF, SJ, CHI, BOS, NY, LV), but TAP is the only app that actually ate my card - that is to say it erroneously reports my card is on another device despite never having installed this app on any other device, much more actually sign in, after a single use. Hopefully the customer service can resolve the matter, but when you can't perform the namesake's action (i.e. tap to board), what are you doing?
Christopher McKenzie
1 year ago
THIS DOESN'T ACTUALLY WORK. It just transfers balances to digital cards you can't actually use. What total garbage. 5 cards totaling about $230, now completely useless. I've never jumped the turnstiles before but had to here because of the outrightly refusal of the app to do anything. I've tried 2 devices, reinstalling the app, multiple stops. None of this works. What a dumpster fire.
Peter Shek
1 year ago
I have a card from 6 years ago that was barely used and in good condition. I had transferred it to my phone for over a year and have been using it from my phone at least a few times a month without problems. Lately, the machine keeps saying "bad authentication" every time I scan it. I restarted it at the spot too and same thing. The driver said it is my phone. I just don't know because the app is up to date and I can use other credit cards via google pay without issue.
Edward Wang
1 year ago
I only use the app for the virtual card and to manage my virtual & physical cards. The app works fine. I'm able to tap to pay w/ my phone, even if the TAP app isn't open, w/o much issue, although the machine does take a bit to respond. Occasionally, the TAP machines do get a read error when I try to use my phone -- force-refreshing the virtual card in the app usually fixes it. Managing my cards works well for my needs. I still prefer if we had the ability to add the TAP card to Google Pay.
