Contactless in Paris
Only partly: tap to pay on funiculars, some buses, some coaches and some metro lines; not on trams or trains. The full guide is on the Paris page.
Where contactless works
Where a tap works
Tap to pay — bank card or phonesomesomesome
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Other ways to pay (travel smartcard, phone ticket and paper ticket) are on the Paris page.
- A contactless bank card or phone pays on funiculars, and on some metro lines, buses and coaches, but not on trams or trains. On coaches, the card you tapped is your ticket, so keep it on you and show it if asked; on metro lines, tap at the gate on your way in; on buses, tap the reader on board as you get on; on funiculars, touch in only.
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iledefrance-mobilites.fr fetched 28 Jul 2026aerobus.fr fetched 28 Jul 2026 - Cards named as accepted: Visa and Mastercard. The operator names some of the cards it takes but does not claim the list is complete, so a card missing from it is not a refusal.
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iledefrance-mobilites.fr fetched 11 Aug 2026 - Nothing to buy first. IDFM frames it as a fallback option for occasional users who forgot to buy a ticket in advance, not the recommended primary purchase channel.
- Where the card cannot pay: trams or trains. Buy a ticket for those before you board.
- Get it wrong and it costs. A penalty fare of €70.00 applies to travel without a valid ticket.
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iledefrance-mobilites.fr fetched 28 Jul 2026iledefrance-mobilites.fr fetched 11 Aug 2026 - On capping: No cap and no transfers: each tap buys exactly one direct trip, with no free change between services and no round-trip re-use (a rider must buy again to change vehicle or return).
Questions about paying by card
Can I use contactless in Paris?
On the buses, yes; on the metro, not yet. A contactless Visa, Mastercard or French bank card (CB), or the same card in a phone or watch, taps to ride at three kinds of reader: the card machine on board RATP's buses in Paris and the inner suburbs, the reader at the entrance to the Montmartre funicular, and the exit gates of the Aéroport d'Orly station on metro line 14. Those are the only three, and the last works on the way out of Orly, not on the way in.
Do not tap at a metro or RER gate anywhere else: the gates have no bank-card reader yet. Line 1 gets them in July 2027 and the rest of the network follows by 2030. Until then the metro, the RER (including the RER B to Charles de Gaulle), RATP's trams and the Orlyval shuttle all want a ticket bought first: on a Navigo Easy card or in the Île-de-France Mobilités app.
Where the card does work, each tap buys one direct trip and nothing more: no change of vehicle, no return. Except on the funicular, it also costs more than the same ticket bought in advance. A bus tap is €2,55, €0,50 above the app or Navigo Easy price; the funicular tap is €2,55, the same as its Navigo fare; the airport tap out of Orly is €14,80; and when the metro readers arrive, a metro tap will be €3,35, each of those last two €0,80 above the app price at 2026 tariffs. Île-de-France Mobilités describes the bank-card tap as a fallback for a forgotten ticket, not the way to get about.
Further out, in Seine-et-Marne, the Yvelines, the Essonne and the Val-d'Oise, most buses are run by the private companies of the Optile federation, and those buses have no bank-card machine yet. The Beauvais airport coaches are their own case: the Porte Maillot line sells its ticket at a counter or machine at either end, card or cash at Beauvais and card only at Porte Maillot, and you show that ticket to the staff at the coach station; the La Villette line sells nothing on the spot at all.
So buy a Navigo Easy card or load the app before you head for the metro, and keep the bank card for the bus you did not plan to catch.
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Can I use contactless on the metro in Paris?
No — with one exception so narrow it is easier to treat as no. A contactless bank card does not open a metro gate in Paris. Île-de-France Mobilités does not start fitting bank-card readers to the ordinary metro and RER gates until July 2027, beginning with line 1, and the network is not due to be finished until 2030.
The exception is at Aéroport d'Orly, the southern terminus of line 14, and it is on the EXIT gates only. Since June 2026 you can touch a CB, Visa or Mastercard card at the barrier on your way out of that station and pay the fare there. It does not work in the other direction, and it does not work anywhere else: tapping a card at a metro gate to get in, at Orly or anywhere in the city, pays for nothing and will not let you through. Orlyval, the automatic shuttle between Orly and Antony, takes no bank card either.
So buy a metro journey before you reach the barrier — a Navigo Easy card or the Île-de-France Mobilités app on your phone — and keep the bank card for RATP's buses and the Montmartre funicular, which are the two places in Paris where a tap really is the ticket.
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Can I use contactless on the bus in Paris?
On RATP's buses, yes; on the buses further out, no. RATP runs the bus network inside Paris and the petite couronne, and since November 2025 it has been fitting its vehicles with a small card machine that replaces the ticket the driver used to sell. Touch a CB, Visa or Mastercard contactless card, phone or watch on it as you board — one tap, no tap off — and the fare is €2,55.
That is fifty cents more than the same bus journey bought in advance in the Île-de-France Mobilités app or from a Navigo Easy card, and it buys strictly less: a bank-card ticket is one direct trip with no transfer, so changing bus means paying again, where the ticket you bought in advance would have carried you for an hour and a half.
Beyond the petite couronne the buses belong to the private companies represented by Optile — the operators running Île-de-France Mobilités' routes in Seine-et-Marne, the Yvelines, the Essonne and the Val-d'Oise — and the card machine was not part of their network. A tap buys nothing on one of those. So tap as you board inside Paris, and if your route runs out into the outer suburbs, buy the journey on a Navigo Easy card or in the app before you get to the stop.