Testing begins of transit fares by phone
Testing of phone tapping transit fares has begun.
Testing of the payment of transit fares via cellphones has begun.
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Kate
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MarcG 10:28 on 2025-12-01 Permalink
Wow, that sentence threw me for a loop. The idiom ‘phone tapping’ is taken already. 🙂
CE 10:48 on 2025-12-01 Permalink
I really hope the STM eventually allows us to tap debit/credit cards like transit agencies do in many other cities. It takes a lot of the friction out of paying fares, especially for occasional users and tourists.
Kate 12:17 on 2025-12-01 Permalink
MarcG, how would you rephrase it?
vasi 12:28 on 2025-12-01 Permalink
I was just part of a pilot for this a couple months back. I’m not sure what the difference is with this new pilot.
It works ok, but it’s kinda annoying that you need to put fares on “virtual cards”. You even need multiple virtual cards if you have incompatible fares, eg: an A all modes on one card, and AB all modes on another card.
dhomas 12:31 on 2025-12-01 Permalink
I was part of the beta testing for the phone fares. It works really well. Your phone screen doesn’t even need to be on, and you can have multiple different fares on the same phone.
However, our fare structure is still kinda bonkers, compared to elsewhere in the world. Most everywhere else, you can pay with a transit card, phone or even just a regular credit/debit card. Then, two things happen:
1) at the end of your trip, you get charged the correct amount. In Montreal terms, this would mean that if you embark in Zone A and disembark in Zone A, you get charged 3.75$ for a Zone A ticket. If you embark in Zone A and disembark in Zone B, you get charged 5$ for a Zone AB ticket. Since we don’t have exit checks, it would take a lot of work to get this done in Montreal.
2) when you use transit over a certain threshold, you automatically get placed on the best fare. For example, a single Zone A ticket is 3.75$. If you use it 9 times in a week, you would have spent 33.75$. But a Zone A weekly pass is 32$. So, with the threshold payments, you would stop paying at 32$ for the week. If you use Zone A transit 28 times in a month (105$), you would get capped at 104.50$ and ride “free” the rest of the month, since this is the price of a month Zone A pass.
MarcG 13:46 on 2025-12-01 Permalink
Not sure I can improve on it, Kate, it’s a funky word collision.
Nicholas 19:25 on 2025-12-01 Permalink
dhomas, I fully agree with you. One way to avoid fare gates with a phone is what Denmark does: you can share GPS and when you start your trip you go on your phone app and select that you’re starting, and end when ending, and it calculates everything for you. Problem is what if you don’t have data, or a phone? Denmark has physical cards, but they’re being phased out next year.
steph 19:48 on 2025-12-01 Permalink
Can we call it ‘NFC tapping’.
Ian 20:40 on 2025-12-01 Permalink
Bluetooth handshake?
Ian 21:23 on 2025-12-01 Permalink
n.b. I say bluetooth because I thnk with your phone it actually is BT not NFC, but I am ready to be corrected!
Tee Owe 15:08 on 2025-12-02 Permalink
Agreeing with CE – I have commented on this before – try visiting London, it’s sooo user-friendly and easy- also Toronto iirc. How the individual systems work out the intricacies of their fare structures is for them to figure out- for the user, it simply works. Where I live (Denmark) my credit/debit card is part of what my phone does so tapping is everyday. Hope Montreal gets there soon.