How to buy a public transport ticket in Poland without stress

Jason Kowalski

September 8, 2021
10 min read
1540 Views

How to buy a public transport ticket in Poland without stress

Probably everyone who has been in Poland at least once for a relatively long period of time has faced the problem of getting around different cities. Here I’m not just talking about bus and tram schedules and which line goes where and from which bus stop. At the beginning of the article, we are talking about payment methods. As always, I will explain from my own experience what the best and most stress-free way is and how it happened. Of course, this was prompted by my life situation. So, let me begin my story.

[PREFACE] In different cities, the payment system is somewhat different. If we talk about the bus, in smaller cities you can buy a ticket from the driver, but not always. In big cities, this is problematic and often impossible, but in big cities there are often large yellow booths near bus stops where you can buy a ticket. Payment can be made by card (especially convenient with pay passes) or in cash. I won’t tell you how to navigate the menu, it’s intuitive. But the problem is that there are often no ticket machines at the bus stop, the bus has arrived, and you can’t buy a ticket from the driver.

I recently had a situation that made me think. I flew from Kyiv to Gdansk airport, where my girlfriend met me. We were waiting at the bus stop for the bus and didn’t notice that there was a ticket machine. As I also knew, there is an SKM (surface subway) in Truimasti (Sopot, Gdynia, Gdańsk), and it was better to use it, but nevertheless, when I arrived from Kyiv and met my girlfriend, the first thing I saw was a bus stop, not a surface subway platform in Truimasti. We get on the bus, I give the driver 20 zlotys, and he is unpleasant and unhappy and asks for 7.20 without change and also points to the ticket machine. The second joke was when we decided to use the SKM subway. There are two types of tickets there – from the ticket machine for the next train, which does not need to be compounded, or you can buy a ticket at the ticket office, which we did. The ticket from the ticket office needs to be compounded, but not in the subway car or on the platform, but almost immediately at the ticket office, and then you go up the stairs to the platform. We didn’t know this, so we took the “hare” train from Sopot to Gdańsk. On the way back, we figured out what was going on and composted our tickets before entering the platform (there are yellow composters there).

Also, once we were traveling from the Metropolia shopping center to Gdansk, and we barely bought tickets there because the ticket machine had a touch screen and it was very glitchy and did not work properly, but I somehow paid with a card and we bought a ticket for two people.

A few days later I was going on business to the city of Mikołów, which actually merges with Katowice. After spending a few days in Mikołów, on Sunday I had to leave the train station in Mikołów for the train station (Dworzec PKP) in Katowice. On Sunday in Mikołów, the ticket kiosk near the station was closed. I didn’t see anyone paying the driver in Mikołów, and having had a previous unpleasant experience in Gdańsk, I decided that I needed to find some healthy alternative. In Mikołów, Katowice, and Tychy, which are part of the same agglomeration, there are buses of the KZK GOP transport company. I remembered that there are people who buy tickets from their phones and decided to look for a way to do it myself. [/END OF FOREWORD]

I don’t remember exactly what I entered when I was looking for a program, but it wasn’t advertising, so I chose the first one I came across. It’s called SkyCash, it’s free, it’s ad-free. You can top up your account in the program itself with a card, or you can connect the card (which I did) and every time you buy a ticket, you will only need to enter a CVV code to confirm. And that’s it, no SMS, no confirmations, etc. As you can see in the screenshots below, here you can choose the carrier you need at the moment, which I did, then you can choose the number of people, that is, you can pay for yourself and your girlfriend or friend. In Mikolov, I chose the carrier as shown in the screenshot below. The nuance that before the trip you need to enter the bus number (although not in every city and not always, but only if the program “asks”), I entered just before the bus arrived at the bus stop – I just looked at the number written in orange numbers above the windshield of the bus. The tickets are valid for quite a while, so you can buy them earlier (of course, if you know the bus number in advance). For example, 10-15 minutes before arrival.

The purchase procedure is quick: choose the city, carrier, bus number, number of passengers, your previously added card, cvv code – three digits on the back of the card and the bus number. That’s it.

To check if the ticket is valid, go to the menu and select “bilety do kontroli”. It’s the same when the controller comes. We show it to him, he scans the code, or just looks at it.

After Mikołów and Katowice, I returned to Gdańsk. From Gdańsk to Sopot I traveled by the SKM surface subway. I also bought tickets in this program. There is a menu called Koleje Regionalne, and there are many Polish rail carriers there, SKM was among them.

Later, from the same menu, I chose the train of the local Silesian carrier Koleje Śląskie when I was traveling from Katowice to Bielsko-Biała. In SKM, they checked my ticket only once, but in Koleje Śląskie they checked it every time and everything was fine.

I would also say that this program often helped me out because it saves a lot of time – when you arrive at the station, you can buy a ticket in advance, not stand in line, and go straight to the platform. I also saved a lot of nerves. The only thing you need besides the program is a bank card and the Internet. Although many Ukrainians don’t want to replenish their account and use free, often poor, Wi-Fi because 30 zlotys a month is expensive, that’s another story.

What to press when the control

If you’ve bought many tickets before, don’t get confused in the list, look at the time on your phone and the time of purchase, it should be approximately the same. Do not be nervous and do not rush. Sometimes the last ticket you bought is not the last one in the list of other tickets, but the penultimate one – pay attention to this, because I once (if not for my girlfriend) would have bought another ticket because I didn’t notice that I had already bought one.

The last screenshot shows the ticket information. I took a screenshot of a ticket that had already expired, but a valid ticket still has a QR code from the very beginning, which must be shown to the controller, and he scans it and that’s it. Once they didn’t scan my ticket, they just looked at the data and that was it.

Since I always share my personal experience, it’s time to add to the article six months later. And all thanks to the fact that I went to Zakopane, the famous Polish mountain capital. The city itself, the neighborhood, the region and the atmosphere deserve a separate article. But let’s get to the point. It turns out that the SkyCash program does not work in all Polish cities, because not every public transport company has signed a contract with them. The program supports most Polish cities, but Zakopane, which I needed, was not among them. I didn’t lose heart and downloaded another popular competitor program, MPay. It’s also quite convenient, but here, after attaching the card to the account, you need to come up with your personal pin code and enter it when buying a ticket. Below are screenshots of how it looks like, I pointed to this program with a red arrow in the first photo below.

This is how the ticketing menu looks like:

Select the “BILETY” tab and then the city, in my example it was Zakopane, and in the photo below it is Krakow, because this is where I live now and once I had to buy a ticket in Krakow through mPay, not through SkyCash, and I will explain why later.

And the last step is to buy a ticket via M-Pay. Choose the number of tickets we need (one or more if you are traveling, for example, with your wife or girlfriend, or a friend who will give you the money) and then make the payment by entering the pin code I mentioned earlier.

Now I’ll get back to why you need to have two programs for paying for public transport tickets in Poland on your phone just in case. As always, this is based on my personal experience. Not only because the city you need may not be on the list, as Zakopane was not on Sky Cash, but also for another reason. Once I was waiting for a tram in Krakow and canceled the ticket three times using SkyCash without entering the CVV code from the card. The program blocked my ability to pay for half an hour because of such reckless carelessness on my part. And then my tram arrived. I remembered that in Zakopane I used mPay, so I opened it, changed the city from Zakopane to Krakow and bought a ticket. Looking ahead, I will say that now I have a monthly travel pass for Krakow, so I no longer buy tickets online or offline, but simply top up the card once a month and that’s it. I will describe this in more detail in the article a little later.

Now, another addition for the year 2021 – SkyCash is already available in Zakopane.