Payphone

A payphone (alternative spelling: pay phone or pay telephone) is typically a coin-operated public telephone, often located in a telephone booth or in high-traffic public areas. Prepayment is required by inserting coins or telephone tokens, swiping a credit or debit card, or using a telephone card.

This article is about a public telephone. For the song by Maroon 5, see Payphone (song). For the song by Bob Luman, see The Pay Phone.

The company that operates the payphone generally pays either rent or a revenue share to the owner of the property where the phone is installed.

Invented in the late 19th century, payphones became ubiquitous worldwide in the 20th, enough to contribute to the notion of universal access to basic communication services. In the late 1920s, the cost of a payphone call in the United States was two cents. In the 1930s, calls were five cents; the cost of a typical local call had risen to 10 cents by the 1960s, 15 cents during the 1970s, then 25 cents in the 1980s. By the early 21st century, the price of a local call was usually fifty cents. The rise of mobile phones during the early 21st century had led to the near extinction of payphones. New York City, which once had 30,000, removed its last public payphone in 2022.

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