Cash payment for fares will not be accepted on buses of the Seychelles Public Transportation Corporation (SPTC) as the company is going cashless from July 1, a top official said on Tuesday.

Passengers will now require an SPTC bus card and for the first three months from July 1, it will also be sold on its buses.

SPTC said that the first card will be free of charge but for an additional one, it will cost SCR50 ($4).

Cards can be purchased from the drivers themselves. To encourage people to make the switch to using a card the price of a bus trip during the day for those using cards is SCR10 ($0.7) while for cash payment it is SCR12 ($0.89). The cost of a night trip is SCR15 ($1.1).

"Our decision to go cashless has many reasons, with the main one being the security of our drivers," said the acting chief executive of SPTC, Jeffy Zialor.

He explained that with no cash in the driver's possession, it will eliminate the chances of drivers being attacked by people looking to steal money, as has happened in the past.

Another reason was to speed up the boarding process as Zialor said that a passenger's process of finding the money to pay the driver on the bus takes too long.

"This makes them late but with the cashless procedure and everyone using a card, it will take less than three seconds and it will make it faster and more efficient," he explained.

SPTC said that it is encouraging everyone to get bus cards that do not have an expiry date and can be reloaded at its headquarters in Victoria and in shops all around the island at SCR30 with two trips already loaded.

"When working on this project, we took into account the visitors and we are in the final stages of working on a special card that will be made available to them," added Zialor.

Meanwhile, the cards will be on sale at SPTC's headquarters, along with shops all around the island at $2 (SCR30), with two trips already loaded onto them.

"We want to move closer to our clients and so we have decided to make the process of reloading the cards available everywhere so that people do not have to line up at our offices anymore," said Zialor.

Plans for SPTC's buses to go cashless have been in the works for a number of years now, where all the required equipment was already in buses, with a total of 60 percent of bus users already using bus cards.

SPTC says that members of the public can expect even more innovation from the company in the future, with plans already underway to allow passengers to pay for their bus tickets using smartphones.