Apple Pay Tmoney finally dropped into Wallet today after a very long gestation. Widespread use is limited because only Hyundai Card users can add money in Wallet. There are more options for South Korean cards in Mobile Tmoney app. Everybody else has to add local cash at Korean subway ticket machines or convenience stores but you’ll need to put the device in Service Mode to do so.
Hopefully more credit / debit card support is coming but I sincerely hope Tmoney Co. Ltd does not follow the example of the usurious, unethical, foreign exchange lock-in rip-off Octopus App for Tourists.
There are some nice touches in Apple Pay Tmoney that I wish Suica had: the full card number shows in Wallet card details and there is a global (ish) Wallet auto-charge option. JR East restricts these to Suica App and VIEW cards (auto-charge) but from a user perspective the more cards that support auto-charge, the more people will use it for daily life on the go. On the downside users cannot transfer plastic Tmoney cards to Apple Wallet. At any rate it’s going to be fun watching the reaction of Apple Pay Tmoney users on social media.
What took so long?
Some people on social media pointed out that Apple Pay Suica has been around for 9 years asking why Tmoney is so late to the party. It’s a good question but hard to know the reasons why. Tmoney was originally MIFARE but quickly migrated to the Korean KS X 6923/6924 protocol that uses the same NFC type A of MIFARE. Same NFC frames, different protocol. Apple added KS X 6923/6924 Tmoney support starting in iOS 17, so the software support has been in place since 2023. People often say that Apple takes it time rolling these things out, which is true, but not in the way that people think.
As pointed out earlier, part of the Apple Pay certification (the Apple Pay logo) process means card reader and payment terminal software support Apple’s Enhanced Contactless Polling (ECP). ECP ensures that Apple Wallet knows which card to present to the reader for a smooth transaction experience. Express Mode depends on ECP. Most NFC reader chips support ECP but it’s not clear if Tmoney readers implement it, although it’s telling that turning on Express Transit for Tmoney turns off Express Transit for Chinese T-Union cards. Transit agencies and stores have their own reader hardware replacement cycles so system wide ECP support can take a long time to rollout and test. But that’s not the whole story.
Which brings up to Taiwan’s EasyCard. Samsung Pay EasyCard has been around for some time now because Samsung Pay supports the hacked MIFARE Classic protocol that Apple Pay does not. Apple and EasyCard Corp (ECC) can’t move forward until the EasyCard card base (along with iPass and iCash) has been migrated to MIFARE Plus or higher and NFC reader infrastructure has been updated to support ECP.
Did Apple Pay Tmoney kill all chances for Apple Pay EasyCard?
While that bar is high, Taiwanese posts on social media claim that implementing Apple Pay Tmoney was so problematic for Apple that they required all future transit cards on their platform must have real-time connectivity, a requirement way too expensive for EEC. In short the cost of launching Apple Pay Tmoney killed all chances for Apple Pay EasyCard. Whatever the reasons, EEC have reported to the government that Apple isn’t interested in supporting EasyCard. It seems that all parties are waiting for Taipei Metro to implement EMV open loop with Apple Pay / Google Pay Express Transit support to match that of Kaohsiung.
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