Living on the Edge Case: Charging a Navigo Card on Your iPhone

Paris has changed its ticketing system and those cards were phased out since the beginning of the year, and introduced new tickets. Now, you can buy Paris public transport tickets using your iPhone’s NFC (and I’m guessing Android as well). Bus and trams cost 2,00 euros. Metro and trains cost 2,50 euros.

I’m visiting Paris soon and I still have four t+ tickets from those olden days of 2024 where Paris zones mattered. These t+ tickets only let me travel between stations which are both in zone 1.

The problem is, my final destination is in Zone 4. No sweat, I’ll just buy the new Metro-Train ticket for 2,50 euros in the SNCF app, my go-to app for buying these tickets. It was not available. Despite all external sources saying it should be.

After some research, I found out that an iPhone can only store the now defunct t+ tickets, or the brand new shiny Metro-Train tickets but not both. 🤦 The app did not say that, but I guess it was because they didn’t care enough for this ✨ edge case ✨.

Solutions

To make matters worse, the obvious solution I found was to simply consume all existing tickets I had. But that would be a waste. I’m not going to Paris to visit the Zone 1 destinations like the Eiffel Tower. I want to go to Zone 4 directly from the train station!

One annoying solution would have been to go old school and destroy the environment by buying actual paper tickets that lets me go to whatever zone I want. I don’t like paper tickets because you have to actually queue up in front of a machine to get them, and if you get unlucky and they get demagnetized (i.e. it stop working), you have to go to any of the customer service booths and hope your day does not get even more ruined from how the underpaid ticket agent treats you. Customer service amirite?

Today, I decided to revisit the problem and found out that the iPhone can actually hold more than one Navigo card! This possibility was not shown nor even signalled in the SNCF app nor the Ile-de-France app. But hey, thankfully I work in tech and should figure this out right?

To add a new Navigo card, I had to go to the Wallet app and add a new card. Call me an Apple noob but I never used that app because it interfered whenever I tried to scan my train tickets.

Anyway, now, I have two Navigo cards on my phone and anxiety on whether it will work. Only time will tell.

Bonus Stories

Complaining about Ile-de-France customer service unlocked two repressed memories I had.

Story 1

One was with an Ile-de-France worker in Houilles Carrieres-sur-Seine whose face and frown signalled that they were mad for some reason. I did the usual “bonjour”, as one does and explained to him that my tickets don’t work. Without saying a word, not even a hello, this guy did process my request in the iciest way possible. Basically threw the new valid tickets at me without saying “voila” or anything. I matched his levels, took my tickets without saying “merci” and left. This dude then had the audacity to let out a passive-aggressive “merci”. So without skipping a beat, I replied with a “de rien” and off I went.

Story 2

Another incident was when I took a bus going to Argenteuil and got blocked going down at the terminus. A man blocked the way without saying anything. After five seconds, I figured out that he was a controller and wanted to see if I had a valid transport ticket. Spoiler: I did. But it was on the iPhone.

It was the first time I used the iPhone for tickets but I spent a lot of time figuring out that I got the good ticket. So I showed this man the iPhone and he was like: that’s not a thing. He pressed his scanner thingy and it gave a sound that signified it was not happy. I told him in French: “Look, I bought this ticket 30 minutes ago for this ride. I have 9 rides left. That should add up”. He was still not happy.

After five minutes of back-and-forth and him talking to me as if I’m some sort of low-life, I was like: “Just try it again”. He did try scanning my phone again. A checkmark appeared on his scanner and he turned around and moved somewhere else. No apologies for accusing me, no apologies for talking to me condescendingly.

I pretended I didn’t understand what happened. So I followed him. I asked, what happened? He said it was good. I pressed, but you were saying it wasn’t. What happened next? He said it again: it was good. At this point, I thought it was best to leave it be despite the fact I was fuming from the disrespect.

Conclusion

Edge cases suck. And employees of Ile-de-France mobilités in the Nanterre area are generally unpleasant. While you can sometimes be lucky and have a nice polite attendant in the station’s booth, you might encounter abusive disrespectful people who’ve let their modicum of power get to them.