Smart Navigo, the Paris~Île-de-France region digital transit card for mobile, currently on Galaxy devices and Android smartphones with Orange SIM cards, is reportedly coming to Apple Pay in February. Although France was an early innovator of NFC on mobile phones, it did not lead to early mobile transit adoption: Smart Navigo launched in September 2019. Apple Pay Navigo would be the first native transit card (closed loop) for Apple Pay in Europe, it would also be the first smart wearable for Navigo users thanks to Apple Watch. The Calypso based Navigo transit card launched in 2001 and had a large upgrade in 2019 to add more transit services and mobile.
Navigo operator Île-de-France Mobilities has reportedly been in talks with Apple ever since Smart Navigo was first announced in 2017. At that time they said:
“Unfortunately, it won’t be possible for iPhone owners to use the service since Apple does not yet allow third parties to access the NFC secure element in their phones. However, we are happy to explore the possibilities with Apple to offer the same service to all Paris public transport users.
Apple has a uniquely flexible custom embedded Secure Element (eSE) in their A/S Series chips that can be updated to support additional NFC protocols. Calypso is an open protocol that uses NFC-B, it would join the other major Apple Pay protocols, EMV (NFC-A) FeliCa (NFC-F) and MIFARE (NFC-A), that are all proprietary. There isn’t any technical difficulty adding new transit cards. It’s a matter of negotiation and deal making, which can take time.
Apple usually likes to roll out new transit cards following an iOS update. iOS 14.4 would fit a February launch window. There are also reports that Apple Pay Code Payments are working in recent iOS 14.4 internal builds. If all of this pans out, iOS 14.4 could be an important update for Apple Pay users, especially in France.
2021-01-08 UPDATE
01 News reports that iPhone users will be able to reload Navigo cards for day/weekly /monthly passes with an updated ViaNavigo app using NFC starting January 20. This is an important first step of implementing Apple Pay support in advance of the full Apple Pay Navigo service launch due in February and confirms the earlier Le Parisien report. It also follows the 2020 Apple Pay Octopus rollout which saw an updated iOS app with iPhone NFC recharge feature released before the service launch.
2021-01-15 UPDATE
The updated iOS Ile-de-France Mobilités app (previously ViaNavigo) with NFC reload for Navigo cards was released. iPhone 7 and later devices are supported as this follows Core NFC device specs, however iPhone XR/XS support is missing in the initial release and said to be addressed soon. There is also an issue with iPhone SE2 that needs to be restarted to work properly. These issues are fixed in iOS 14.5 and later.
2021-3-15 UPDATE
Apple Pay Navigo is a no-go, for now. Take this tweet with a grain of salt as none of this is confirmed…these things never are:
Navigo on iPhone will only arrive when pay-as-you-go functionality is fully operational (probably because of commission fees if you believe the rumours)… which will only arrive next year (2022) at best, when all exit gates will be equipped with validators
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