Bucharest makes spontaneous travel easy: a bank card, phone or watch can buy a surface ride on STB and open a Metrorex gate. The important detail is what each tap purchases. Surface travel, metro entry and integrated time products are related choices, not one invisible universal account.
Separate the city into three honest products
The payment object becomes the ticket
A phone wallet is not the plastic card underneath it
STB tells bank-card passengers to present the card, phone or watch used for payment to the inspector's reader. Those devices can carry different payment tokens even when they draw from the same account. Keep using the exact object that received the approval.
Ninety minutes means surface transfers, not every gate in the city
The ordinary STB metropolitan journey covers buses, trams and trolleybuses across Bucharest-Ilfov for 90 minutes. It does not by itself include Metrorex. Revalidation within the valid surface window lets the system recognise the transfer.
The 120-minute product deliberately joins the layers
Official integrated metropolitan tickets combine surface operators and metro for 120 minutes, while 24- and 72-hour products can suit a busier visitor. Buy the integrated product through an official sales channel or app when that is the journey you actually need.
Metro gates can charge the card hiding inside a wallet
Metrorex warns passengers not to hold a wallet full of contactless cards near the gate when validating a separate travel card. Present one card or device at a time. An accidental bank-card read can create a new metro purchase instead of validating the product you intended.
The driver and inspector are not ticket desks
STB states that a journey cannot be bought from the driver or from the inspection team. Tap as soon as you board, or activate an app/SMS product according to its rules before travel. A failed or red validator message requires another valid payment method.