Paris to switch on NFC mobile ticketing for bus, tram and metro services in September

Person using transit pass
PASSEPARTOUT: Smart Navigo enables Paris commuters to use tickets stored on their NFC phones

Commuters in the greater Paris region will be able to use their NFC mobile phone to store Navigo transit passes and T+ prepaid ticket books from September 2019.

This follows the completion of a pilot of the new Smart Navigo service in the French capital in which 14,000 commuters downloaded the mobile app and 88% of users said they would use the service in the future.

“The aim is to gradually replace the magnetic ticket with new contactless media such as the smartphone,” explains the region’s transportation authority Île-de-France Mobilités.

“I want to make Île-de-France the first smart region in Europe,” says the authority’s president Valérie Pécresse.

“Thanks to this new service, there’s no more waiting at the station or station ticket machine to recharge your Navigo pass or buy tickets. Purchase and validation of the ticket will be possible from all compatible mobile phones.”

Smart Navigo stores tickets and passes in the SIM in Android smartphones operating on the Orange network or in the embedded secure element built into certain Samsung phones, enabling commuters to use the service even if their smartphone is switched off or out of battery.

“For others, discussions are currently underway with major smartphone manufacturers to extend the offer to all users,” says Île-de-France Mobilités.

It forecasts that there will be more than 20,000 users of the service this year, rising to 300,000-plus by 2020 and ultimately over 3m.

Currently, 4.3m commuters purchase a monthly Navigo pass, 440m tickets are sold in the region each year and more than 50,000 ticket validators have been deployed across the region.

The system has been developed by a consortium of companies including Dejamobile, Gemalto and Wizway, and incorporates Dejamobile’s ReadyToTap transport solution.