Foreign tourists can ride Jeju buses with overseas Visa cards

A foreign tourist taps a Visa card to ride a bus on Jeju Island in this undated photo. Courtesy of Visa

According to Visa, Thursday, the transit system has been implemented on all Jeju buses starting this month. This project marks the first application of such a system to public transportation in Korea.

It was launched as part of an agreement signed in March between Visa and Jeju Special Self-Governing Province, with the goal of advancing the island's payment infrastructure. Through this initiative, Jeju aims to enhance convenience for foreign tourists and take the lead in developing new business models built around the innovative payment system.

The open-loop transit payment system allows passengers to tap and pay fares using credit, debit or prepaid cards based on the EMV global payment standard. Customers can also use various devices, including smartphones and smartwatches.

The system was first introduced in London in 2012 and has since been adopted in major cities such as New York, Hong Kong and Singapore. In 2024 alone, Visa processed over 2 billion contactless transit fare payments - more than double the volume recorded in 2022.

The system is continuing to expand rapidly, particularly across Asia. For instance, last September, Beijing fully implemented open-loop payments using overseas-issued cards across its entire subway network, covering all 490 stations.

In contrast, Korea's transportation payment system, known as payOn, has remained the dominant method since its launch in 1997, giving domestic stakeholders little incentive to address its limitations.

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