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The Octopus card is a rechargeable contactless smart card used in an electronic payment system in Hong Kong. Originally launched in September 1997 as a fare collection system for the city's mass transit systems, it has grown into a widely used electronic cash system for convenience stores, supermarkets, restaurants, parking garages and other point-of-sale applications. It has become one of the world's most successful e-cash systems, with over nine million Octopus-cards circulating and over 80 service vendors (June 2003). It replaced an older system called Common Stored Value Tickets , which used plastic magnetically sensitive cards.
There are two types of Octopus card available: ordinary and personalized.
An ordinary Octopus card is anonymous and can easily be purchased at Hong Kong's Mass Transit Railway (MTR) stations and Kowloon Canton Railway (KCR) customer service counters with cash. No Hong Kong ID card or passport is required upon purchase. If an owner loses it, only the cash stored is lost. No personal information, bank accounts or credit cards are stored in the card.
A "personalized” Octopus card, in addition to all the functions of an ordinary card, can be used as a key card for access to some residential and office buildings. An owner can sign up to use a bank account to top it up the value automatically. The card is automatically topped up with HK$250 after the balance goes below zero. The card can be frozen to prevent unauthorized use should the card lost.
The card can be used on nearly all Hong Kong transportation systems, and many stores in the city, most notably, 7-Eleven convenience stores, McDonald's, other fast food restaurants and Starbucks coffee shops.
(Source: RFID Journal, FinanceAsia)
Because Octopus cards are contactless, a visitor to Hong Kong will find it strange to see people tapping their wallets, handbags, backpacks or jackets on the yellow and orange Octopus readers. The card can be read through common materials such as cotton or leather, for up to a few centimters away from the reader, and takes about 1/3 of a second per transaction.
An Octopus card transaction is a store and forward transaction, meaning reader units do not need round-trip communications with a central database or computer. The stored data about the transaction is transmitted by network after hours, or retrieved by a clearing device (usually a Pocket PCA Pocket PC is a computer in a handheld size that runs a variation of the operating system Windows CE. It has many capabilities of modern desktop PCs. Currently there are thousands of applications for Pocket PC, many free. Some of these devices, running M). The data is then sent to the Octopus Central Database.
Incorporated in 19931993 is a common year starting on Friday and marked the Beginning of the International Decade to Combat Racism and Racial Discrimination (1993-2003 Events January January 1 Czechoslovakia divides. Establishment of independent Slovakia and Czech Republic., Creative Star Limited (CSL), is a private company that settles accounts between the Octopus system and the operators/merchants. Because of this settlement function, CSL has a deposit-taking licence by the Hong Kong Monetary AuthorityThe Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA) is a government authority founded on April 1, 1993 in Hong Kong from the consolidation of the Office of the Exchange Fund and the Office of the Commissioner of Banking. It reports directly to the Financial Secretary (HKMA).