Have you not yet subscribed to your Navigo plan for March and are you worried about the traditional queues at the ticket offices at the start of the month? Your cell phone may save you! For five months now, it has been possible to recharge the pass from your smartphone, provided that it is an Android, equipped with NFC technology.
Better still, you can also buy the Navigo pass or tickets, individually or in the book, directly on the phone, which you then just have to hold in front of the metro terminals to validate its passage.
"Saving time for customers"
These new products have been available since the end of September on the Ile-de-France Mobilités ViaNavigo application. But for the past few days, they have also been available on the SNCF Assistant apps and on that of the RATP. After two months on strike which helped to ignore this innovation, RATP decided to go to its customers to inform them.
These days, agents came to explain to users renewing their Navigo pass that they could now do it at home, from their sofa, if they had a compatible smartphone. "This is really the right time," explains Elise Aubry, in charge of developing this new functionality on the RATP app. It's very simple and saves time for customers. This solution is complementary to the other RATP offers and customers can always go to the counter if they wish. ”
IPhone is not yet part of the device
Three million phones are eligible in Ile-de-France. These are essentially the most recent Samsung, and Android phones from the operator Orange. But Apple's iPhones are still missing. The discussions between IDFM and the apple brand continue and intensify, we are assured.
While waiting for the iPhone, the passage of Navigo on smartphones has however started well. More than 51,000 Ile-de-France customers used the application on ViaNavigo, RATP or SNCF in January, 58,000 in February. About half have purchased tickets through this channel.
Paperless tickets are sold cheaper
An encouraging sign, despite the strike, that these new means of payment can be useful. The ability to use your smartphone is not the only way to do without the good old paper metro ticket. The Navigo Easy pass, a contactless card used to load tickets, has already sold more than 500,000 copies.
It should be remembered that these new tickets, on smartphones and Navigo Easy, have a price advantage with regard to ticket books: they are sold for 14.90 euros on these dematerialized media, against 16.90 euros for the paper notebook.
