Hong Kong's Octopus spreads its tentacles to the mainland
Small but mighty, the Octopus card is coming to a mainland city near you. Photo by Flickr user limaoscarjulietThe mighty Octopus card, ubiquitous in Hong Kong letting people do everything from ride subways to pay phone bills, is headed to mainland China soon.
The card is a simple value added account where customers can deposit cash onto the card and use that money to pay for public transportation, food and goods. In Hong Kong retailers like 7-Eleven, McDonald's and supermarket chains accept the Octopus card. The Wall Street Journal reports that “the system has revolutionized life in Hong Kong, mostly without glitches, handling an average of 11 million financial transactions every day worth about US$12.9 million.”
China isn’t the first market the Octopus card is moving into outside of Hong Kong. The company that makes the card is currently working with the New Zealand, Dubai and the Netherlands governments to use the Octopus card in their public transportation system.
If all goes according to plan, Octopus told the Wall Street Journal that it “hopes to secure contracts with 10 mainland Chinese cities that issue so-called citizen cards within the next three years.”
Although Shanghai already has a similar -- although more limited use -- transportation card, the 'citizen card', along with the Octopus facilities, would be a major expansion from that card’s basic function and even broader than the use of the Octopus card in Hong Kong. A citizen card would carry not only money but serve as official ID holding information from insurance and residential data to pension and medical history. Privacy advocates are skeptical to say the least.
Octopus is reluctant to name the Chinese cities it's currently in talks with but Nanjing officials admit to having discussions with the company and Hangzhou has said it wants to expand the features of its current card. With Shanghai’s sister cities both on the Octopus band wagon, we wouldn’t be surprised to see a card with such expanded features popping up here soon. They'll miss the 2010 Expo hype but hey, the city needs to save something exciting for 2011.
