The Presto card (stylized as PRESTO) is a contactless smart card automated fare collection system used on participating public transit systems in the province of Ontario, Canada, specifically in Greater Toronto, Hamilton, and Ottawa. Presto card readers were implemented on a trial basis from 25 June 2007 to 30 September 2008. Full implementation began in November 2009 and it was rolled out across rapid transit stations, railway stations, bus stops and terminals, and transit vehicles on eleven different transit systems.

A variant of the Presto card is the Presto ticket, introduced on 5 April 2019, which is a single-use paper ticket with an embedded chip. The Presto ticket can only be used for the services of the Toronto Transit Commission.[2][3]

In late 2023 and mid-2024, Presto was made available for use in Google Wallet and Apple Wallet, respectively.[4][5][6]

Presto is a result of The Big Move, the 2008 regional transportation plan for the Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area (GTHA), which had an integrated fare payment system as one of its strategies.[7] Presto is an operating division of Metrolinx, the Ontario government agency that manages and integrates road transport and public transit in the GTHA.

In 1998, GO Transit began work on a smart card system with ERG Transit Systems. A year-long pilot of the system on GO Transit's Richmond Hill line was scheduled to begin in the fourth quarter of 2000, but was delayed to June 2002.[8][9] During the pilot, 4,000 people used the cards and a total of 10,000 cards were issued. That year, the Ministry of Transportation of Ontario (MTO), in conjunction with GO Transit and GTHA municipalities, began investigating the merits of a regional fare card, and it began development by June 2003.[10][11]

GO did not continue its partnership with ERG after the pilot, preferring a more flexible system.[8][11] Instead, GO opted to implement a different system in partnership with other Greater Toronto transit systems.[8] They developed the specifications of the system around 2004 and in October 2006, the Ministry of Transportation signed a 10-year, $250-million contract with Accenture to design, develop and operate the base Presto system for the GTHA.[8][10] Two major transit agencies, OC Transpo and the Toronto Transit Commission (TTC), agreed to adopt the fare card system in 2007 and 2009 respectively. The larger anticipated userbase prompted the MTO to decide on developing a new system, called Presto Next Generation (PNG). The Auditor General of Ontario criticized this move, suggesting that the base Presto system should have been expanded to accommodate OC Transpo and the Toronto Transit Commission.[10]

Thales Group and Accenture were awarded the contract to supply this system in October 2009. Implementation was the responsibility of Metrolinx, of which Presto became an operating division in 2011.

The Presto project was strongly criticized by the Auditor General of Ontario in 2012 for "roll-out glitches, cost escalations and untendered contract extensions" and warned the system could become the world's most expensive fare-card implementation project.[10][12][13] Instead of putting the development Presto Next Generation out to competitive tender, Metrolinx simply increased the size of the original base contract awarded to Accenture in 2006. By 2012, the cost of the system ballooned to $700 million.[14]

The Presto rollout on the TTC's surface transit fleet have been marred with abnormally high failure rates of the readers themselves[15] and cost overruns.[16] A TTC position paper noted that faulty Presto card readers used by fare inspectors on the proof-of-payment streetcar system was making it "difficult to get customers to comply with inspections" and costing the TTC in lost fare revenue.[17]

A 3 June 2017 story in the Toronto Star first reported that customers' Presto travel histories were provided to police authorities 12 times in the previous year, with a warrant having been required for only two of those disclosures and customers typically not having been notified that their records had been shared.[18] The figures were confirmed by Metrolinx in later reports, stating that they had granted 12 of 26 requests received from various police agencies.[19] In response to calls for reforming the data sharing system from experts and transit riding advocates, Metrolinx launched a formal review of its privacy policies.[20]

The rollout of the fare system and accompanying replacement fare gates on the TTC's subway network was met with poor reliability[21][22] and issues with processing transactions. Presto was forced to use its existing software back-end for other municipal transit partners that have completed the roll-out, as the TTC has yet to develop its own dedicated infrastructure to process the larger volume of transactions it typically handles.[23] The new fare gates suffered from persistent mechanical and software problems, prompting the TTC to suspend the rollout for a month to work with the contractor, Scheidt & Bachmann, to resolve reliability issues.[24] As a result, over 2,000 motors on more than 1,000 gates had to be replaced in addition to numerous hardware and software updates.[25] The June 2018 deadline for the complete roll-out of Presto for the TTC will be further pushed to 2019 due to these ongoing issues, prompting a delay in the phasing out of cash fares, tokens and other legacy fare media.[26] As a result, the TTC will face higher fare collection costs as it incurs "transitional costs" of operating parts of Presto and the legacy fare regimes concurrently over the next few years.[27][28] A situation TTC board member John Campbell describes as "totally inefficient".[29]

In its annual report released in 2018, Metrolinx indicated it expected the cost of the Presto system to reach $1.2 billion, with $1 billion already spent in the development and implementation the system between 2002 and March 2018.[30] While Presto was designed for complex fare transactions between GTA transit agencies, up until the fourth quarter of 2019, the system on TTC buses was not able to support the payment of special surcharges for TTC express downtown buses and TTC trips that enter Mississauga and York Region where a Miway or YRT fare was required. As of late 2018, the TTC Presto system at large continues to experience abnormally high failure rates.[31] This led to an estimated loss of at least $3.4 million in revenue in 2018 alone according to the TTC.[32] The 2018 Audit Work Plan by the auditor general of Ontario noted that the number of reports of Presto collection machines not functioning properly is likely under-counted and a breakdown in communication between Metrolinx, the TTC, and two of its vendors led to operational issues. This included a finding that over half the "out-of-service" incidents raised for the fare vending machines on the TTC's new Flexity streetcars are "coin or token box full" errors, the root cause being miscommunication between the TTC and Metrolinx on coin and token collection leading to the vending machines not being emptied frequently enough.[33]

In early 2018, Metrolinx detailed a plan to increase transit ridership by use of a mobile app (available for Android and iOS devices) which it released to the public for testing in beta version in late 2018. The Presto app was released in January 2019,[34] and allows transit users to reload their Presto card directly from their mobile device.[35][36][37]