Sitpass: the metropolitan fare system that checks your face at the depot
This overview was generated with AI from the public sources listed below and checked against them before publication. It has not had a complete human fact-check — treat it as a starting point and follow the sources.
How this atlas is made · What “last verified” means · What “source-checked” means
The RMTC, the bus network shared by Goiânia and its metropolitan neighbours, switched to a new Sitpass electronic ticketing platform on 23 January 2021, an investment the RedeMob consortium of concessionaires put at about R$16 million; the roughly 1.6 million cards already in circulation kept working. Facial biometrics started with elderly free-travel cardholders: an on-board camera photographs the passenger at boarding, the image is held in the validator and uploaded when the bus reaches the depot, and only then is it compared with the photo on the cardholder's record, with mismatches sent for human inspection. Because validators are online, a lost or stolen card is blocked at once instead of taking up to three working days. The platform is what made the Bilhete Único possible from 2 April 2022 — one fare of R$4.30 buys up to four transfers within two and a half hours, with no obligation to pass through a terminal. Governance sits above the city: the network is managed by the Companhia Metropolitana de Transportes Coletivos (CMTC) and operated by the RedeMob concessionaires.
what does this mean?
The strongest source is the operator's or the city's own reporting — an official report, dataset or press release. It grades who did the looking — not how well the project went. All four grades →🎓 Lesson
The biometric check is retrospective rather than a gate — a mismatch is discovered after the trip and then reviewed by a person — so it deters reuse of somebody else's free-travel card without ever stopping a boarding. Meanwhile the most modern payment channel was the first to go: on 14 July 2025 the RMTC withdrew NFC payment by phone and smartwatch, in use since December 2021, citing the risk of virtual cards that need no physical authentication, and published no figures on actual fraud. Physical contactless bank cards and Sitpass cards were unaffected.
Sources
Continue exploring
Compare this project
Explore the wider context
📎 Cite this project
1001 Smart Cities (2026). “Sitpass: the metropolitan fare system that checks your face at the depot” — Goiânia, Brazil. The Smart City Atlas. https://1001smartcities.org/projects/goiania-rmtc-sitpass-ticketing/ (last verified 2026-08-10). Data: CC BY 4.0.
The underlying data is free to reuse with attribution — see the open data page.