It’s finally a reality: since Wednesday, public transit users in Greater Montreal can recharge their OPUS card with a mobile phone. By the end of 2024, it should also be possible to pay on board certain buses, or even the metro, with a bank card, as is already the case in Laval.
“We are very confident that everything will go well,” explains in an interview the director general of the Regional Metropolitan Transport Authority, Benoit Gendron, who visited the metro in recent days to show this new technology to users. A promotional video will also be launched soon.
Several test phases have already been taking place for several weeks on the future OPUS mobile charging system, which works through the already existing application, Chrono. In total, 15,000 Montrealers were able to test the application and of these, approximately 97% of them managed to obtain tickets. The remaining 3% came from handling errors or technical bugs that have since been fixed.
Already in place in several other large cities around the world, both in Europe and North America, mobile top-up allows the user to bring their OPUS card to their phone and consult its contents using an application. and purchase titles and then add them to your card.
It will still not be possible to present your phone at the turnstiles; this should be done by 2026. In other words, for the moment, you will have to continue to use your good old blue and orange physical card. “We are at the limit of the OPUS system. Currently, intelligence is on the map,” says Mr. Gendron.
His group is finalizing a tender that will allow it to select a supplier to transform the OPUS system, which is card-based, to a 100% digital system. “The card will become a system, a kind of customer account which will be in the cloud to carry out all transactions,” illustrates the CEO.
“We are currently looking to see if we can keep the OPUS brand, which is very well known. There is no decision being made as we speak,” adds Mr. Gendron, who however assures that whatever the decision, those who want to continue to use a physical card will be able to do so.
Pay by Interac… starting in the fall
In the shorter term, the ARTM also announced this Wednesday that it will bring forward the arrival of payment by Interac debit or credit card to fall 2024. It should in fact be possible to do so in “certain networks” by this fall, says the manager.
For the moment, only users of the Société de transport de Laval (STL) can do so in the metropolitan region, and this has been the case since last summer on a permanent basis. The Société de transport de Montréal (STM), the Réseau de transport de Longueuil (RTL), exo and the Réseau express métropolitain (REM) are still waiting for this functionality.
Note also that in Quebec, the Capital Transport Network (RTC) has already been offering for a while the possibility of obtaining a ticket from your phone, with a bank or credit card.
The arrival of mobile charging is part of the vast digital transformation underway at the ARTM. By 2027, 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 the electric scooter.
In short, everything should be delivered within three years, at most. Benoit Gendron recognizes that this vast reform “did not happen at the speed we would have liked”. “The pandemic deprived us of 90% of our users, so the challenges were more focused on winning back customers and maintaining services than on technological development,” he explains.
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- 144 million
- End of August, The Press revealed that this transformation, called the “Concerto” project, would cost 144 million, with a budget for contingencies of 18.5 million, for a total of 162 million. The ARTM estimates that these investments would yield 364 million in benefits by 2035.