It should finally be possible to present your phone at the turnstiles earlier than expected, i.e. from the summer of 2025, to validate your passage on the metro and buses of Greater Montreal. However, paying with a phone will have to wait a little longer.
Users will thus be able to “emulate” an OPUS card on their mobile, but they will have to wait before being able to use it to pay directly. The Regional Metropolitan Transport Authority (ARTM) hopes to accelerate the deployment of its vast “Concerto” project, its digital transformation expected to cost more than $140 million.
The news was hidden in a press release on the increase in annual rates on Thursday. It reports a “progressive deployment of the digitization of the OPUS card in the smartphone” which will begin during the summer of 2025. To date, the Authority had only committed to payment by telephone of here 2026.
From next summer, the telephone will therefore be able to replace the OPUS card to go to the turnstiles, starting with the most used tickets such as “All modes”. Ultimately, we will then be able to emulate the number of cards we want on the phone, which may please crown users who sometimes have to deal with several cards and transport tickets.
To pay directly with your cell phone, as is already done in several large European and North American cities, you will have to wait until 2026. “It’s a bit like a halfway solution that we’re offering,” explains the spokesperson for the organization, Simon Charbonneau.
Mr. Charbonneau claims that his group was inspired by the Régie Autonome des Transports Parisiens (RATP), which operates the Paris metro. The French operator has just delivered a similar transitional solution in the run-up to the Olympic Games, which will bring more than 15 million visitors to the capital.
An RATP expert who has experienced the implementation cycle will also support the ARTM in its efforts, as will Transamo, a French mobility and transport consulting firm. “We plan to go to a call for tenders very soon,” Mr. Charbonneau said on Thursday.
In the shorter term, the ARTM also confirmed Thursday that it will bring forward the arrival of payment by Interac debit or credit card on “certain exo lines” in the northern crown to the fall of 2024. The measure is already in place on Société de transport de Laval (STL) buses.
Since April, public transit users in Greater Montreal have been able to recharge their OPUS card with a mobile phone, using the Chrono mobile application. Despite significant technical glitches that occurred at the start, particularly around the turn of May, more than 500,000 transactions were made in just a few months.
It is ultimately by 2027 that a “multi-mode” system will be deployed, possibly using the same mobile application, bringing together the metro, the bus, the REM, car sharing, bike sharing, taxi, carpooling or even electric scooters.
