The IT Nerd

For a while now, Metrolinx who is the transit agency for the Greater Toronto And Hamilton Area has had the ability to have your PRESTO Card which is the contactless transit card that the agency prefers that you use on your Android phone. Apple users have wanted equal treatment, and today they finally got that equal treatment.

PRESTO card in Apple Wallet is here! Now it’s even easier to take transit with more ways to pay your fare across the region. pic.twitter.com/idZeqhjM00

— Metrolinx (@Metrolinx) July 16, 2024

Now there is a catch that you should be aware of. There is a process to take a physical PRESTO Card and convert it to one that can be used in Apple Wallet. But the problem with that is it will “kill” the physical card. As in the physical card will no longer work after you go through this conversion process. Now for some, that’s no big deal. But it potentially leaves you without an option if you want to say, lend a card to someone who needs to travel on transit. Or perhaps you simply want a backup. And the fact that a new physical card is $10 isn’t exactly cool either. Thus, what I will do is walk you through two options. One being the conversion of a physical card to a card inside your Apple Wallet. And the second where I will show you how to create a brand new card in Apple Wallet.

There’s another thing that I should point out. OC Transpo which is the mass transit provider in Ottawa Ontario does not support paying for transit via this method. So if you use OC Transpo, do not follow these steps.

The prerequisite to doing some of this is that you need to have the latest version of the PRESTO app on your phone.

The version that I have is version 2.10. That came out a few hours ago. The second prerequisite is that you need a PRESTO Account that has your cards in it already. So if you don’t have a PRESTO Account with your cards in it, now is a good time to create one via the app.

Let’s start with creating a new card. And there seem to be two ways to do this. The quickest way to do this is to go Apple Wallet and click on the “+” in the top right. I’ve circled it in red to highlight it.

That will take you to this screen:

Click on Transit Card. Which takes you to this screen.

Choose PRESTO card, which takes you here.

Click on Continue. That takes you to this screen.

Here you can load funds onto the card via Apple Pay. In this example, I will add $10. Then I will click Add in the top right corner.

This is where I get prompted to add funds via Apple Pay. After I pay, I get this screen:

Now this seemed to take about three minutes to actually add the card to my iPhone. So be patient.

And the card is added to my iPhone. I will also note that this method appears not to require the PRESTO App to be installed on your iPhone.

Now I am not sure how I feel about Express Mode being enabled by default as I am big believer that you should authenticate to pay for something 100% of the time. So I may disable that later. Having said that, I am not done yet. I will need to add this to my Apple Watch. I’ll get to that later because I want to explore the other option to add a new card via the PRESTO App. Start with opening the app and clicking Add Card on the right.

Next choose PRESTO in Apple Wallet and click the button below it.

You get a tutorial that you can skip if you so choose.

You then need to Load Funds or Load A New Pass. The latter option is if you want to add a monthly student pass or some other pass for example as those passes can save you money. For this example, I will do the former.

I am going to add $10 to this card and click buy now. You’ll then be prompted to pay with either Apple Pay or via a credit or debit card that is in your account. Again, it took me a few minutes before the card was added to Apple Wallet.

So which option should you use? If you simply need a PRESTO Card, I’d use the first option. If you want to add a transit pass to said PRESTO Card, I would use the second option.

Now, back to adding your PRESTO Card to your Apple Watch. And it’s a bit odd because unlike credit and debit cards on your iPhone which replicate to your Apple Watch, the PRESTO card doesn’t do that. What you’re actually doing is moving it to your Apple Watch from your iPhone. And you can move it back from your Apple Watch to your iPhone if you so choose. It appears that PRESTO can only deal with one unique card and can’t support what I will call “cloned” cards. For example, the debit or credit card that you add to your iPhone gets “cloned” to your Apple Watch. But no such support exists for PRESTO cards. That would explain why PRESTO “kills” the physical card if you convert it to a digital one. It also means that if you want to have a PRESTO card on your Apple Watch, you either have to move it to the watch and forget about using it on your iPhone. Or you need to put a second card on your Apple Watch and manage two cards. Now let me play Devil’s Advocate. This approach makes sense because Apple Watch users are always wearing their Apple Watches. Thus they can tap their watch on a PRESTO card reader and pay for transit without taking out their phone. And seeing that smartphone thefts are on the rise in Toronto, that’s likely going to help to keep your phone safe.

With that out of the way, if you want to move your PRESTO card to your Apple Watch, you start the process with opening the Apple Watch app on your iPhone and clicking on Wallet & Apple Pay.

You can see the PRESTO card that I just added to my iPhone. Click the ADD button.

Here’s where you get warned about the fact that this process only moves the card but doesn’t clone it. Clicking Next gets you to this screen:

Adding the card seemed to take about 90 seconds. After that, I got this screen.

If you see this screen, the process worked. As for Express Mode being enabled by default, I am still not a fan of this. But the use case makes a bit more sense because I can just tap my Apple Watch on a PRESTO reader and hop onto a bus, streetcar or subway train. But if you want to put the card back on your iPhone, here’s how you do it:

• Open the Apple Watch app on your iPhone
• Pick the PRESTO card
• Scroll down until you see “Add card to (insert name of your iPhone here)” and follow the prompts which are similar to the ones above.

Finally, let’s cover how to convert a physical PRESTO card over to a digital one. And I will remind you that once you convert the physical PRESTO card to a digital one, it will “kill” the physical card. So if you want a physical card for whatever reason, do not follow these instructions.

Converting a physical card to a digital one only seems possible via the Presto App. Assuming that you also have a PRESTO account with PRESTO cards in it, here’s what you need to do.

Pick the card from the list of PRESTO cards that appear in the app.

Next tap the Convert To Apple Wallet button.

Here you will see the warnings that not only that this process will “kill” your physical card, but using these cards with Apple Wallet isn’t supported by OC Transpo. Click Convert To Apple Wallet. At that point you will have to click through another warning about this. Nobody can say that Metrolinx hasn’t warned you about what’s going to happen next.

Next you need to hold your physical PRESTO card to the back of the iPhone. In my case, near the top of the iPhone worked for me. And taking off the case really helps with this. Then it will prompt you to add the card to Apple Wallet. When you see this prompt, the card is dead, and you are forced to complete the process of converting the physical card over to being a digital one which only takes a couple more clicks.

Now I put this together over a few hours after this functionality was announced by Metrolinx. So if you see ways that this can be improved, or anything that I got wrong, or even feedback on how this was done, please let me know in the comments and I will get back to you as quickly as I can.