Montrealers can now tap their phones to pay STM fares — but there’s still one catch

Montrealers relying on their phones to pay for public transit just got some good news.

The Autorité régionale de transport métropolitain (ARTM) announced Tuesday that its test phase for mobile OPUS payments has officially ended, opening the feature up to any Android user rather than just the small group who’d had early access.

Through the Chrono app, riders can now buy transit tickets, store them on their phone, and tap in at an STM turnstile or bus reader the same way they would with a physical OPUS card. The physical card isn’t going away, the agency notes. This is just meant as another option for people who’d rather not carry it around or make a trip to reload it.

Sylvain Perras, the ARTM’s executive director of digital transformation, said the feature was built and tested with thousands of riders over the past several months, with user feedback described as largely positive.

The digital shift is underway

This isn’t the ARTM’s first move toward phasing out plastic. According to the agency, more than half of all OPUS reloads already happen digitally through Chrono, adding up to over 16 million transactions to date.

The new virtual ticket feature builds on that momentum as part of Project Concerto, the ARTM’s $146-million push to modernize a ticketing system that’s about 20 years old and make transit payments easier across the region.

The catch

iPhone users are still waiting on the sidelines. The feature remains exclusive to Android for now, and while the ARTM says its teams are continuing to work with Apple on bringing it to iOS, there’s no launch date yet.

The agency is also looking at implementing further changes down the line, including a pilot for direct bank card payments across the network, expected sometime in 2027, but details on that rollout haven’t been shared yet.

Montreal has been building toward this for a while. STM riders have already been able to reload their OPUS cards by phone since 2024, and the ARTM first began testing tap-to-pay fares with a small group late last year before expanding access from there.

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