Everyone likes to save a little bit of money, so if you are aged 16 or over, there are three leap cards aimed specifically at young people and students – make sure you get the right card for you!
- Child Leap Card (16-18)
- Young Adult (19-23)
- Student Leap Card
Check out our handy Guide to Leap Card for Young People
Our youth information service have had a number of enquiries from young people asking how to apply for the Student Leap Card. So we’ve out together a step by step guide with some screengrabs to help.
Student Leap Card
The Student Leap Card is the national student travel and discount card where full-time students can get discount on fares for Go-Ahead Ireland, Dublin Bus, Luas, Bus Éireann, DART and Irish Rail (Iarnród Éireann) as well as other local private services in the Republic of Ireland. Student Leap Card discounts are also available from the SLC brand partners. If you have an android phone, you can top up your card with credit using the leap card app and your phones NFC technology, if it has it, and all you need to do is tag your card off a tagging station either on the bus or on a luas or Irish rail platform. Easy!
Eligibility: Click here to see if you are eligible to apply for a Student Leap Card.
How to get a student leap card:
Getting started
Go to www.leapcard.ie
Look for the option to Buy Tickets
You will be asked to select a ticket type – go to the drop down menu at the bottom of the page and chose student
After you have chosen Student card the next page will ask you for your date of birth
Type in your date of birth using the dd/mm/yyyy format
Tick the box to show you are not a robot.
The system will then ask you to confirm that you are a student buying a Student Leap Card – there is also a reminder that you will need to bring a Student ID to an agent within 14 days where you will get your card printed
Then you can add the photo you want on your card. This can be a photo you already have and like, or you can take a selfie and use that. You can crop the photo and do a little resizing. If unsure about what kind of photo is acceptable there is some rules you can view.
Just click ‘View Rules’ and it will give you some examples of what is acceptable or not as well as some other guidance
Once you have your photo chosen and uploaded you need click or hit the button marked ‘Confirm Photo’ – We’ve used one of Sam Smith for this explanation. Please do not use photos of other people for YOUR card!!
Then you will be asked to fill in details about yourself – your name, address, where you will be attending college, and what type of course
Watch for the Eircode box – it’s not optional and you need to use it to confirm your address.
Check the Boxes at the end for terms and condition or if you want to get offers from Leap Card
Then you choose the amount of credit you want on the card when you get it
The final steps are to add in your payment details – you pay by Visa or Mastercard by the look of it, and then there is a confirmation step.
Once you have done all that, you will get a confirmation code.
Bring this code to an agent to get your card printed – you can generally get it done in universities, the Dublin Bus office on O’Connell Street or online via Trinity College Student Union who are offering an online verification process https://www.tcdsu.org/student-leap-card-remote-verification-process . Our Youth Information Services in Dun Laoghaire and Bray are hoping to provide this service soon!!
You will need to make sure you have you Student ID available
Student Leap Card have a list of agents on their webpage
Click here to chat online with a trained Youth Information Officer or you can contact us.