DART BRT Cashless Smart-Card Fare Collection

Dar es Salaam's BRT dropped cash and paper QR tickets on 1 March 2025, making the DART agency's smart card the only way to ride — the second attempt at cashless fares, after a 2016 operator card was discontinued when the government restructured fare collection. The automated fare-collection system, financed under the World Bank's Dar es Salaam Urban Transport Improvement Project, put turnstile gates and ticket validators across 29 stations and five terminals and gives DART station-level ridership data. The mandate stuck, but the card economics did not: by May 2026 DART reported 430,000 cards distributed with fewer than 200,000 still active, and only about TSh 400 million recovered of some TSh 2 billion invested — a loss of roughly TSh 5,000 on every card sold for TSh 1,000. The agency now says it is preparing facial- and palm-recognition ticketing, and delayed smart-gate installation was one reason the Kilwa Road Phase 2 corridor missed several launch dates before opening in mid-2026.