Hi Ben. My wife and I have 2 year old Navigo Decouverte cards. My two children do not have cards. We are in Paris two weeks from now and stay for one week. The kids’ phones are staying in Canada. We are considering using my wife’s phone for my daughter’s week-long pass and my phone for my son’s week-long pass.
1) will using our phones for the kids IDF passes prevent us from, in the future, using our phones for our own IDF passes?
2) if we use our phones for the kids’ week-long passes on this upcoming trip, will we also be able to reload our existing physical Decouverte cards from our phones?
1 answer
Hi there. I'll preface my answer with the caveat that I use the Ile de France Mobilites app as a single phone owner/user and these answers are from what I can gather by playing around with it and my experience as a mobile app developer, but I don't have any detailed knowledge of the inner workings of the app, nor the bureacracy of the Ile-de-France Mobilites transit administration.
- No, using your phones for IDF Mobilites app Navigo Week passes for your kids won't affect your personal use of IDF Mobilites app for your own Navigo passes in the future. Within the IDF Mobilites app, on the bottom right hand corner is a menu item for "My Space". From the My Space screen, at the top, will be the current logged in user/profile. (see bottom note for more info) There is an on/off icon on the right hand side of the user profile that you can click to Log Out the current user or switch users. You can use this to switch between your child's account/profile and your own. Remember that each Navigo Week Pass user must have their own account/profile (i.e. photo/name) to be in compliance, so you'll need to create a profile for your child.
- I believe you can use your phone's NFC capability to reload a physical plastic smart card Navigo Week pass even while another mobile-phone-based Navigo pass is active on the phone itself. I have not done this myself, but I could imagine it's possible. I'm guessing it's possible due to the profile switching functionality mentioned in #1 above and you would need to switch to your profile prior to renewing your physical pass. If this is not allowed for some reason, you would just need to visit any automated ticket machine to reload your physical card Navigo Pass. Another thought is, you could (should?) renew your physical passes using the IDF Mobilites app, using your profile, prior to switching to your child's profile and then purchasing the in-app Navigo Week Pass on the phone for them.
Bottom note: The profiles for users within the app are created/stored not within the app itself on the phone, but on https://connect.iledefrance-mobilites.fr/. So when you are logging in / swapping accounts, you're actually doing so via this website/service/backend and the profile is being shown in the app through a "webview" making it look like it's a part of the app. When making purchases within the IDF Mobilites app for Navigo Passes, the purchase & pass is associated to the whomever is currently logged in. You can create your children's accounts now (while you're still at home, using the app) and possibly have their email/password stored & handy via your phone's password manager, to make it easier/quicker to log in / swap profiles, after you arrive, prior to making a purchase for them.
Hope it all works well. If you have a chance, I'd be interested in hearing about your experience with it after your return. Have a great trip.