Subscribe to our social channels to get the latest news about Hungary!
ZH
IT
DE
Contactless payments ready to be rolled out on all Budapest metro lines
The Budapest Transport Centre (BKK) will begin installing new ticket validators on the Budapest metro network on Wednesday, 11 March, as part of a pilot expansion for its Pay&GO contactless bank card payment system. This will make the service available on every line by mid-April, the BKK announced to MTI on Tuesday.
Pay&GO soon to appear on all Budapest metro lines
As they explained, the essence of the Budapest Pay&GO system is that purchasing and validation occur in a single step—simply by tapping a bank card (or other smart device) on the validator. No prior registration, app download, or paper ticket is required, allowing passengers to begin their journey immediately. The card itself serves as proof of travel entitlement, which inspectors can verify via their devices based on the Pay&GO purchase record.
The BKK added that Pay&GO, soon to appear on all metro lines, is now an international standard, employed by hundreds of major cities worldwide.
Installation begins tomorrow
Installation of the new validators begins on Wednesday and is expected to take four weeks, the BKK said. They will first appear at M2 line stations, followed by M4 and then M3 stations. The devices will remain inactive until mid-April, meaning no purchases or validations can be made on them during this period. Typically, 2-5 new machines will be installed per station, while some existing validators will stay operational, allowing passengers to continue validating paper tickets as usual.
Parallel to the Pay&GO rollout, NFC readers—previously installed for validating tickets bought via the BudapestGO app—will be removed from metro stations between 9 March and 1 April.
Bank card-based system is slated to expand
The BKK noted that this expanded pilot enables ticket purchases only; a full Pay&GO electronic ticketing service, planned for later, will cater to both occasional travellers and regular users with diverse options such as season passes and discounted packages. It will also allow setting spending limits for casual trips, such as daily or weekly caps.
The authority indicated that the bank card-based system is slated to expand gradually across the entire Budapest and suburban public transport network from 2028.
If you missed:
- Hungary reintroduces price caps on motor fuel
- Luxury trains set to roll on the Budapest-Belgrade line: leather seats, coffee machines and 200 km/h speeds
So, they installed N.F.C. readers barely a couple years ago, at enormous cost, and now they’re getting rid of them. Just like that.
Must be nice to have so much taxpayer money to throw around willy-nilly.
Where is that serial loser Karacsony to regale us with his monthly tale about Budapest being on the verge of bankruptcy due to this kind of gross financial mismanagem… – I mean, due to the federal government’s vindictiveness???