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Woman fined Dh2,200 for failing to show bus ticket on iPhone

Kelly could not prove she had tapped onto the vehicle with Apple Pay.

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A blogger hopped on a bus in London and used her iPhone to pay the £1.50 fare but realised it had run out of battery, leaving her unable to prove to the conductor.
Jemima Kelly was fined £476 and denied visa for a trip to US after she was convicted for dodging the fare.
According to reports in Mirror.co.uk, the bus conductor asked Kelly for her ticket five minutes after she boarded the London bus. But as her iPhone was dead, Kelly could not prove she had tapped onto the vehicle with Apple Pay.
She forgot about the incident until she received a letter from Transport for London (TfL) warning her she had 21 days to either plead guilty or not guilty to failing to produce a ticket. Kelly even sent a bank statement to TfL proving she had paid the fare but that was considered insufficient evidence and £476.50 was cut from her pay cheque, following a court request. Although the conviction was quashed later, the blogger lost £1,000 she had spent to book flight ticket to the US as a US embassy official refused to give her a visa.
Later Kelly wrote in the Financial Times: 'I always thought that criminals were meant to be the ones that exploited 'innovation'. But it felt like innovation had exploited me, and turned me into a criminal.
I still use Apple Pay to tap in on buses and trains - I'm not going to seek revenge against the digital revolution just because it stung me'.
She further wrote that she has now bought a portable charger to avoid getting caught in such a situation again in future.

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