Montreal public transit users can refill OPUS cards on their phones

A feature eagerly awaited by many public transit users in Greater Montreal is being rolled out Wednesday: it’s now possible to recharge your OPUS card using an application on your mobile phone.

Using the Chrono application, which can be installed free of charge on Apple and Android devices, public transit users can now buy fares by tapping their OPUS card on the back of their mobile phone.

According to the Concerto team, made up of the Autorité régionale de transport métropolitain (ARTM) and its various partner transit companies, this new feature offers greater flexibility to OPUS cardholders, “by avoiding queues at points of sale and allowing them to buy fares more spontaneously, while on the move.”

The Chrono application already showed the number of tickets remaining on an OPUS card, but the ticket purchase function was launched on Wednesday.

This roll-out comes at the end of a trial period during which 15,000 residents of the metropolitan area were able to test the new function.

Over the next few years, the Concerto team’s objective is to offer payment by bank card directly at the validation terminal, in addition to renewing the ticketing system.

–This report by La Presse Canadienne was translated by CityNews