The Cairo Metro's contactless fare system has run on Lines 1 and 2 since 2013, supplied by Indra, with Thales equipping Line 3 and the two integrated so that one rechargeable wallet card works across all three. Passengers tap in and tap out, and the gate deducts a distance band — EGP 10, 12, 15 or 20 as of March 2026 — under the banded structure that replaced the flat fare in May 2018, a change met with protests and arrests. The card never replaced paper: single-journey tickets are still sold at windows. Thirteen years on it remains an ordinary stored-value card. No bank card, QR code or phone opens a gate; Visa terminals reached ticket booths on Lines 1 and 2 only in December 2025, and Line 3's operator still takes cash at its offices. The network belongs to the National Authority for Tunnels under the Ministry of Transport, which sets fares nationally; the state Egyptian Company for Metro Management and Operation runs Lines 1 and 2, and RATP Dev Mobility Cairo has run Line 3 since 2021 under a 15-year contract awarded in 2020. A single card spanning metro, monorail, light rail and buses was announced in November 2023 and again in November 2025 without arriving; the new monorail was equipped separately in 2026 with a different, account-based system.
A fare card is not a network card. Cairo's has charged by distance since 2013, earlier than Kigali's Tap&Go or Lagos's Cowry, yet thirteen years on it still stops at the metro's own gates. Nothing measurable comes back out of it either: neither operator publishes ridership or a schedule feed, circulating daily-ridership claims run from 3 million to 5 million with no reconciliation, and the only machine-readable Cairo Metro GTFS is a third-party estimate released by Transport for Cairo in 2016 under a non-commercial licence.
Evidence• No measured figure
Scale🗺️ Regional
Cost≈€7M (2019 five-year ticketing maintenance contract; original build cost not disclosed)
FundingEgyptian state procurement through the Egyptian Company for Metro Management and Operation and the National Authority for Tunnels
Sources
↗ Indra (supplier, Oct 2019)Fetched OK. The load-bearing date: states Indra's Lines 1 and 2 access-control and ticket-sale systems 'came into operation in 2013', describes an 'advanced contactless ticketing solution', and records a five-year maintenance renewal 'for an amount exceeding 7 million Euros'. Supplier self-report — the only primary source located for the 2013 date.
↗ IDOM (supervising engineer)Fetched OK. Independent of the suppliers. Confirms the split — Indra for Lines 1 and 2, Thales for Line 3 — and that IDOM verified 'integration protocols between the existing and new line systems'. Equipment scope: 55 ticket office machines, 250 new automatic gates, 350 upgraded gates, one central control unit. No dates given.
↗ Mobility Cairo / RATP Dev (operator, Line 3) — FAQFetched OK. Operator primary. Confirms reloadable Wallet cards and season passes sold at Line 3 ticket offices and vending machines, and states plainly 'To purchase tickets and Wallet cards only cash money payement is available' — the basis for the finding that Line 3 takes cash only. Also confirms no online ticket sales ('Not yet').
↗ Mobility Cairo / RATP Dev — company pageFetched OK. Confirms RATP Dev Mobility Cairo is a 100% RATP Dev subsidiary and has operated Green Line 3 since 2021. Does not give contract date, duration, value or awarding authority.
↗ RATP newsroom — Line 3 O&M contract (2020)FETCH FAILED (403), as did International Railway Journal and Railway Gazette on the same contract. Search-level only: three trade outlets concur that the National Authority for Tunnels awarded RATP Dev a 15-year operation and maintenance contract signed September 2020, reported at €1.1bn. The entry states the 15-year term and 2020 award, which mobilitycairo.com corroborates as to operation from 2021; the €1.1bn value is deliberately left out of the snippet as unfetched.
↗ Egyptian Streets (press, 11 May 2018)Fetched OK. Ministry of Transport introduced distance banding at EGP 3 / 5 / 7 by number of stops, replacing a flat fare, effective 12 May 2018. Confirms the mechanism the card depends on. References a companion piece on arrests but carries no detail.
↗ Al-Monitor (press, May 2018)NOT FETCHED — search-level only. Supports the unquantified statement that the 2018 rise drew protests and arrests; Middle East Eye carries a parallel report. No arrest count is asserted in the entry because none could be confirmed at source.
↗ Daily News Egypt (press, 26 Mar 2026)Fetched OK. Current bands after the March 2026 adjustment: EGP 10 up to 9 stations, EGP 12 up to 16, EGP 15 up to 23, EGP 20 for 23-39. Source for the four-tier structure in the snippet.
↗ Egypt State Information Service (Dec 2025)FETCH FAILED (503); Ahram Online's version of the same story also failed (403). Search-level across three outlets: on 9 December 2025 the Transport Ministry activated Visa-accepting payment machines at ticket booths and subscription offices on Lines 1 and 2 only. Critically this is payment AT THE COUNTER, not open-loop EMV at the gate. The same ministry statement quoted 'more than 4.5 million passengers daily' — one of four irreconcilable ridership figures, so unused.
↗ Indra (supplier, 10 June 2026) — Cairo monorail ABTFetched OK. The monorail runs a separate account-based system across 35 stations, 400+ faregates. Decisive negative evidence: the release lists EMV bank card access and mobile app integration as FUTURE capabilities, and describes integration with other operators as something possible 'further ahead' — confirming no unified card and no open loop exist today.
↗ SceneNow (press, 27 Nov 2025)Fetched OK. The unified metro/monorail/LRT/bus card spanning ECM, RATP Dev, Mwasalat Misr and private operators is 'being developed', with no launch date and no figures. Establishes the re-announcement two years after the first.
↗ Egyptian Streets (press, 8 Nov 2023)Fetched OK. The first announcement, by Minister of Transport Kamel Al-Wazir: one card for trains, metro, light rail and buses. No timeline, no figures, nothing operational at the time.
↗ Transport for Cairo — Metro GTFS (third party)Fetched OK. Basis for the open-data finding. A civic initiative, not the operator, released the only machine-readable Cairo Metro feed for Open Data Day Cairo 2016, licensed CC BY-NC 4.0, with the README caveat that 'All data related to schedules and dates are estimations'.
↗ cairometro.org (independent guide)Fetched OK. LOW AUTHORITY — self-declared as not operated by the National Authority for Tunnels or any government body. Used only to corroborate that one card is valid on all three lines, that it works tap-in/tap-out with the band deducted automatically, that paper single-journey tickets are still sold, and that Visa is accepted at booths on Lines 1 and 2 only. The official operator site cairometro.gov.eg returned 503 on every attempt, so no operator confirmation of the card price or network-wide validity was obtainable.
📎 Cite this project
1001 Smart Cities (2026). “Cairo Metro Contactless Fare Card” — Cairo, Egypt. The Smart City Atlas. https://1001smartcities.org/projects/cairo-metro-ticketing/ (last verified 2026-07-26). Data: CC BY 4.0.
The underlying data is free to reuse with attribution — see the open data page.
