Was that recent? I was in Paris in August and I still had to buy paper t+ tickets to ride the metro. It felt very outdated.
I live in SF and travel regularly to NYC and both of those just let me tap my phone and go. It honestly felt weird for the US to be ahead of a major European city in this way.
It depends on the station. Some stopped to sell tickets and just sell refillable cards.
But you can use cards, ticket, or phone in any station.
The only thing you can’t use, which, in 2023 is pretty stupid, are payments cards (so neither Apple Pay and Google Pay). They even had a long fight with Apple for years to get full access to the NFC API instead of going with just payment cards.
Ironically, there are a lot of other cities in France that are compatible with payment cards, but not Paris.
I can imagine that it’s not the same scale to upgrade Paris ticketing vs the smaller cities but since they’ve done a major overhaul anyway …
I live in SF and travel regularly to NYC and both of those just let me tap my phone and go. It honestly felt weird for the US to be ahead of a major European city in this way.