Train companies target 'donutters' and last-minute digital ticket fraud
A simple double-tap on a smartphone is costing UK rail operators millions. Here is how the schemes work and what operators plan to do about it.
Key points
- Fare dodgers called 'donutters' buy the cheapest valid digital ticket seconds before passing through the ticket gates, regardless of how far they actually travelled.
- South Western Railway and Govia Thameslink Railway (GTR) have both announced crackdowns on digital ticketing fraud.
- The shift away from paper tickets, while convenient, has opened new loopholes that criminals exploit with nothing more than a smartphone.
- The UK government, which plans to bring most of England's rail services back into public ownership in 2025, is backing the enforcement push.
There is a name for it now. A 'donutter' boards a train at one end of a long route, rides the whole way, then buys the cheapest digital ticket covering only the final stop or two just before the train pulls in. One tap on a phone app, a valid barcode on screen, and they walk through the gates as if nothing happened.
It is brazen. It is also very easy.
How does this kind of fraud actually work?
Digital rail tickets, unlike old paper ones, can be bought in seconds from an app. That convenience is the loophole. A passenger can delay purchasing until the very last moment, buying only a short hop that costs pennies rather than the full-price fare for a journey that might cost ten times as much.
The 'donutting' trick is just one variant. Others involve sharing screenshots of used tickets, exploiting gaps in how conductors scan barcodes, or buying refundable tickets and then claiming the refund after travelling. The common thread is that digital systems, designed to make honest travel smoother, have given dishonest travellers new room to manoeuvre.
South Western Railway and Govia Thameslink Railway, which together cover a large stretch of southern England, are now working with the Department for Transport on technical fixes and stronger enforcement to close these gaps.
Should ordinary passengers be worried?
No. If you buy the right ticket for your journey, nothing here affects you. Honest travellers will not notice most of the changes operators are planning.
That said, if you have ever accidentally bought the wrong ticket and then sorted it out informally with a conductor, stricter automated checking may mean those conversations become harder. Keep your receipts and booking confirmations.
What happens next?
The timing matters. The Guardian first reported on the crackdown as the UK government prepares to renationalise most of England's rail network, which means a single public body will soon control both the trains and the ticketing rules. That creates an opportunity to redesign the digital ticketing system from scratch rather than patch it piecemeal.
For now, operators are leaning on a mix of better gate technology that checks purchase timestamps, more staff checks mid-journey, and data analysis to flag accounts that show suspicious last-minute buying patterns.
The honest answer is that no technical fix is complete on its own. Fraud follows opportunity, and as long as digital tickets can be bought after boarding, some version of this problem will persist. The test is whether enforcement keeps the scale small enough that it stops eating into the finances of a rail network that already struggles to balance its books.
