Tagless fares at 25 Seoul Line 9 stations reach 8,614 a day

There was no need to stop in front of the gates and rummage through a pocket. Walking at a normal pace without taking out a smartphone or transit card completed the boarding process, and a notification arrived on the smartphone moments later. This is T-money’s tagless payment service, officially introduced at 25 Seoul Subway Line 9 stations on July 27.

Tagless payments use low-power Bluetooth, a technology that wirelessly identifies nearby devices. After registering a transit card in the Mobile T-money app on an Android smartphone and enabling tagless payments, passengers can board, exit and pay with the smartphone left in a pocket or bag. In effect, the service eliminates the need to tap a transit card on a reader.

Usage has increased since the service was introduced. According to T-money, daily transactions totaled 1,814 on the first day and surpassed 7,000 per day in August. On August 11, the figure reached 8,614, nearly five times the first-day total. Usage was particularly high among office workers in their 20s to 40s, while transactions were relatively higher on weekdays than weekends, highlighting demand from commuters.

The change is most apparent during busy commuting hours. Passengers carrying bags, luggage or umbrellas no longer need to slow down to take out a card. The service could also give wheelchair users, pregnant women, older people and others with reduced mobility an option that requires fewer movements to pass through the gates. Park Jun-seok, an office worker in his 30s who uses the service, said that after getting used to it, he found it “much more convenient.”

What changes, then, is the few seconds spent using the subway. Tagless payments are now expanding to the Ui-Sinseol Light Rail, parts of the Incheon Subway and some Seoul bus routes, but on the Seoul Subway they remain limited to part of Line 9. Passengers cannot complete an entire journey using only tagless payments when transferring to another line or a bus. To complete every trip with tagless payments alone, coverage will need to expand across public transportation as a whole.