Using your Bee Card

Tagging on and off

You’ll use your Bee Card to tag on and off the bus as you travel. See our on the bus section for more information about this. 

It’s important that you remember to tag off at the end of your trip. Tagging off applies any free fare or concession you’re entitled to. Note if you don’t tag off, you’ll be charged a full fare by default. 

Paying for more than one passenger

Every passenger should have their own Bee Card to travel, so that correct fare concessions can be applied to their trip. If you need to use your card to pay for another passenger’s trip you can, please speak to the driver. 

Paper tickets

Using a Bee Card means you will not be given a paper ticket. 

Concessions

To see what concessions you can received on your Bee Card, visit our Concessions page.

Using your Bee Card in other parts of New Zealand

The Bee Card is a prepay travel smartcard for public transport in Northland, Waikato, Bay of Plenty, Gisborne, Hawke's Bay, Taranaki, Manawatu-Whanganui, Nelson, Otago and Invercargill.

The following concessions are common across all regions mentioned above:

• Child (6-18 years)
• SuperGold
• Senior
• Community Services Card (Community Connect)
• Tertiary

When you use a Bee Card with a pre-loaded concession and tag on and off the bus, the applicable concession will be automatically applied. 

Things to note:

You will be charged the fare relevant to the region you’re travelling in – this may be different to Bay of Plenty’s fares.

If their fare policies are different to ours you may not be able to travel for free.

If you're planning to move permanently to a different region, we recommend applying for a new Bee Card registered in that specific region. This way, you can take full advantage of the local concessions available in your new location.

Looking after your Bee Card

To look after your Bee card you should keep it in a safe place so that it doesn't get bent or scratched.

Please do not punch a hole in your Bee card as the system will not be able to read it.

Lost, stolen or damaged Bee Cards

If you have registered your card before it is lost, stolen or damaged, you can cancel your card online or in-person at a Bay of Plenty Regional Council office, and the balance can be transferred to a new card for you.

You will need to pay $5 for a replacement card. If a card is not registered, any existing balance cannot be transferred.

Still have questions?

There is a full list of Frequently Asked Questions on the Bee Card website. 

Please visit www.beecard.co.nz/faqopen_in_new for these.