No more waiting in line at ticket machines, Lisbon residents! Carris, the public road transport company for passengers, has come to the rescue with the release of its CarrisWay mobile app at the end of February 2024.

Carris created the app with the help of consulting firm DXspark and the Carris Information Technology team, making it the first transport operator in Portugal to design and launch its own app to help users top up their transport cards. The new app can be used on Android and iOS smartphones with compatible NFC technology.   

Only metro cards with embedded chips and antennae inside can be used with the new app, not the paper cards issued from ticket machines. These include Navegante cards, which can be requested from any Fertagus Ticket Office and are typically delivered within 10 days, and Lisboa Viva cards, which can be requested from Carris offices and either delivered to your home or issued directly at the office if you pay more.

How to use the CarrisWay app

To use the app, simply open the app and click “Iniciar Leitura.”

Place your card on the top of your phone screen (not underneath) and hold it there.

You will then be given the option to charge (carregar) your card through Zapping (charging a set euro amount) or one of the monthly passes such as Navegante Municipais (30 € per month) or Navegante Metropolitano (40 € per month). The Navegante Metropolitano includes a wider area of Lisbon stretching all the way to Cascais and Sintra. It includes 18 municipalities and all forms of transportation. It only restarts at the beginning of each month, so if you charge it in the middle of the month, you will only be given 15 days.

After you click “Carregar,” you can choose to enter your email address in order to receive a receipt. If you don’t want to enter your email, you can toggle the button to “Desativar envio de fatura para o email.”

On the next screen, you can choose to enter your NIF number or toggle the button off. Then, you can pay by MBWay or by credit or debit card. Both options will ask you to confirm your phone number before you can proceed and make the payment.

With the launch of CarrisWay, in addition to the introduction of contactless bank card payments directly at the ticket gates in June 2023, it has never been easier to use the Lisbon transport system. Hopefully, this means that residents who do not live near ticket machines will no longer have to pay to travel to a machine just to recharge, deal with broken ticket machines, or use machines that only accept change. If you don’t have a smart transport card, now is the time to get one with the introduction of CarrisWay.