Beijing bus rides a QR scan away

[Photo: from VCG]

Could you live a whole day without money? With a smart phone, it is easy for ordinary people to do so in Beijing, even when public transportation is involved.

You can scan a QR code when boarding a bus and pay after the ride, at half the cost of paying in cash.

The pilot service, introduced at the end of last year, has been offered on some bus lines running in six suburban districts of Beijing, including Tongzhou, Changping, Shunyi, Miyun, Daxing and Pinggu.

To use the service, you can download an application named "Beijing Yikatong" from the app store on your smart phone, and open a virtual card account by providing real identification. The app then generates a QR code.

You can pay the fee through your virtual card account or WeChat Pay by scanning the QR code again when getting off the bus.

According to Beijing Municipal Administration & Communication Card Co, the number of "Beijing Yikatong" users has surpassed 300,000 and daily QR code payments reached 10,000 in March.

Before the app was introduced, only smart phones with NFC chips could pay this way.

Since last June, the number of riders using NFC payments has exceeded 1.3 million, with daily payments reaching 600,000. More than 50,000 top-ups were made daily in March, an increase of 138 percent over last month.

[The audio clip is from Studio+, produced by CRI]