COTA TAP TO PAY
THE OBJECTIVE
In December 2025, COTA introduced Tap to Pay, a new way for riders to pay their bus fare. Fare payment is one of the most routine parts of riding transit, but outdated payment systems can create friction, hinder continued ridership and lead to a less-than-ideal customer experience.
That’s why COTA soft-launched Tap to Pay as a more seamless payment option, aligning the transit experience with the ways riders already pay for everyday purchases. The challenge wasn’t simply introducing a new technology. It was positioning Tap to Pay as an additional option alongside the payment methods riders already know and use. The goal was to make Tap to Pay feel intuitive enough to become part of riders’ existing routines, making taking the bus just a little easier without alienating riders who preferred other ways to pay.
THE OBJECTIVE
The primary objective was to build awareness of Tap to Pay as a new way to ride and drive steady adoption month over month following the December 2025 launch. It was just as important that riders understood Tap to Pay as one more option sitting alongside the ones they already used, not a change to their routine. The campaign also set out to build positive community sentiment, tracked through social listening, earned media and on-the-ground engagement, and to make sure COTA's Operators and frontline staff felt informed and confident enough to serve as ambassadors of the program to the public.
THE APPROACH
The campaign built on COTA's initial soft launch with a bigger push designed to reach not just current riders, but people who ride occasionally or hadn't tried COTA at all. The campaign leaned into a simple observation: tapping is already second nature. People tap off alarms, tap to buy coffee, tap through checkout lines, dozens of small taps a day without a second thought, so paying to ride COTA could feel just as normal. That idea drove the whole creative direction with loud color, oversized playful type and tight shots of a tap in motion, a card against a reader, a phone lighting up a screen, all built around real riders. The campaign showed up wherever people's attention naturally landed, driving past a billboard, scrolling a feed, hearing a radio spot or walking downtown, and no matter where someone met it, the point never changed: riding COTA is just one more tap in a day already full of them.
THE RESULTS
216,525
Tap to Pay Ridership YTD
19M+
Impressions
7.5M+
Video Views
2.9M+
Reach
TAP, TAP, TAP TO PAY
TAP INTO THE LOOK
