Apple Pay to support public transport payments in Korea

Apple users will finally be able to use their phones and watches to pay for public transportation services in Korea, the country’s transit authorities announced Monday.

Tmoney, Korea's transportation card provider, announced "Tmoney will be available on iPhones and Apple Watches" in a post uploaded to Instagram on June 16. [SCREEN CAPTURE]

Apple users will finally be able to use their phones and watches to pay for public transportation services in Korea, transit officials announced Monday.

Tmoney, Korea’s transportation card provider, announced that “Tmoney will be available on iPhones and Apple Watches” on its website and social media on Monday. A specific start date for the service launch was not mentioned.

The announcement comes more than two years since Apple Pay launched in Korea in March 2023. The service’s incompatibility on public transit services was widely considered a roadblock in attracting Korean users, especially as rival mobile payment provider Samsung Pay began supporting public transportation fees since late 2015.

Transit card operators cited the difficulty of upgrading to EMV contactless terminals — the payment standard adopted by Apple — and the fees they must pay to the U.S. tech giant as some of the challenges they faced incorporating Apple Pay into their services.

Following the service linkage, users will be able to use their Apple devices to pay for subway and bus fares.

Passengers tap their cards at ticket barriers in a subway station in Seoul. [NEWS1]

Tmoney also announced Monday that Seoul city buses will pilot a tagless payment system that allows passengers to ride buses without having to tap the card reader with their transportation card.

Passengers who’ve installed the Tmoney mobile app and enabled Bluetooth on their smartphone will have their payments processed automatically upon boarding and exiting the bus.

The pilot program will start in October and cover around 580 buses on 36 bus routes.

Passengers will be able to transfer to buses and subway stations that don’t support the tagless payment service without paying extra charges.

The pilot program will be concentrated in bus routes linked to subway stations to test whether the tagless payment system accurately applies transfer discounts between buses and subways, according to the Seoul Metropolitan Government.

Seoul plans to implement a tagless payment system along subway lines No. 1 through 8 by the end of this year.

BY KIM JU-YEON [kim.juyeon2@joongang.co.kr]