T-money and Transit Cards in Korea

Korea’s public transit runs on T-money, a rechargeable card that also underpins the newer app- and phone-based options. Cash tickets still work everywhere, but they cost more per ride and lose the transfer discount.

Buying a card

Every convenience store — CU, GS25, 7-Eleven, Emart24 — sells a basic T-money card over the counter for about 2,500 KRW, with no travel credit included. Incheon Airport also sells tourist-design cards for around 4,000 KRW. Subway station machines sell cards too. The card itself is a one-time purchase and is not refundable; treat it as a small souvenir once you are done with it.

Loading it

Top up with cash at a convenience store counter or a subway station machine, in amounts from 1,000 to 90,000 KRW at a time. At most machines and stores you cannot load T-money with a foreign card — bring won.

There is one exception, and it only sells tickets rather than loading your card: see the kiosk section below.

What it covers

Subways, city buses, many taxis, and payment at some convenience stores and vending machines nationwide. It also removes the exact-change problem on local buses, where drivers cannot break large notes.

Cash vs. card fare

The 100 KRW gap is per ride, so it adds up fast on a day with several transfers — and the cash ticket route also means queuing at a machine each time instead of tapping straight through the gate.

The 2026 foreign-card kiosks

Since March 2026, Seoul Metro has installed open-loop payment kiosks — about 440 of them across 273 stations on Lines 1 through 8. They accept overseas-issued Visa and Mastercard for single-ride tickets and short-term Climate Card passes (1, 2, 3, 5 and 7 days), with a service fee of roughly 3.7%. They are useful if you arrive without cash and need to move immediately, but they do not load a physical T-money card — for that you still need won.

Apple Pay and MobileTmoney

Since April 2026, Mastercard holders can skip the physical card entirely: register in the MobileTmoney app, load funds using a Mastercard in Apple Wallet, then tap an iPhone or Apple Watch directly at the gate. This runs on the MobileTmoney system rather than a T-money card, and at review time it worked for Mastercard only, with Visa support expected but not yet confirmed live everywhere. Check current coverage before relying on it for a festival day where a gate failure would make you miss a connection.

Refunds

The card itself is not refundable, but the balance on it is — a convenience store or a station refund machine will return your remaining balance, usually minus a small handling fee. Do this before you leave the country if the balance is more than pocket change.

How to actually tap

Trivial in a city, and the source of most confusion outside one.

Subway. Tap in at the gate, tap out at the destination. Both taps are required — failing to tap out leaves the journey open and charges a penalty on your next trip.

City buses. Tap on boarding at the front. On many routes you must also tap on the reader by the rear door when you get off, because the fare depends on distance. If you do not tap out, you are charged the maximum fare and, more importantly, you lose the free transfer. When in doubt, tap the reader as you leave — an unnecessary tap costs nothing.

Transfers. Free between subway and bus, and between buses, within 30 minutes of tapping out, up to a set number of legs. This is the single largest saving on a festival day involving a train to a city and a local bus to the ground.

Taxis. Say 카드로 할게요 (kadeuro halgeyo — “by card”) or simply hold up the card. Most city taxis take T-money; rural ones sometimes do not, which is a reason to keep cash even with a loaded card.

Where T-money stops working

The card is national and the coverage is genuinely broad, but it is not universal, and the gaps sit exactly where visitors meet them.

• Intercity and express buses are separate ticketed services, not T-money rides. Buy at the terminal counter or machine.
• KTX and intercity trains are booked tickets. T-money does not pay a train fare.
• Some rural local buses are cash only, especially the ones serving a village rather than a town.
• Small-town taxis frequently do not take it.

Every one of those exceptions is on the route between the city and a festival, which is why the general advice on this site is cash plus a loaded card rather than either alone.

Regional variations

T-money works in most of the country, but fares, transfer rules and discounts are set by each region, not nationally. The Seoul fare in the table above is a Seoul fare — Busan, Daegu and Gwangju differ, and a rural county bus may charge a flat fare regardless of distance.

You do not need to learn any of this. What you need to know is that the number deducted in another city will not match the number in Seoul, and that this is normal rather than a fault with the card.

There is also a small family of alternative cards — Cashbee is the most common — which do the same job with slightly different coverage. If a shop hands you one instead of T-money, it is fine.

Passes: worth it or not

The Climate Card is an unlimited-ride Seoul pass sold in short-term versions (1, 2, 3, 5 and 7 days) and is the one pass a visitor might genuinely benefit from. The break-even is roughly four or five subway rides a day inside Seoul. If your trip is mostly festivals outside the city, it will not pay for itself, because it does not cover intercity travel.

Tourist passes bundled with attractions rarely pay off for a festival trip, since most Korean festivals are free and the attractions bundled are city museums.

The default recommendation is a plain T-money card with cash on it. It is the flexible option, it works nationwide, and it does not need you to predict your own itinerary.

Refunds

The card itself is not refundable, but the balance on it is — a convenience store or a station refund machine will return your remaining balance, usually minus a small handling fee. There is a cap on how much a convenience store will refund in one go; larger balances go to a station machine or a T-money service centre.

Do this before you leave the country if the balance is more than pocket change. Alternatively, spend it down at a convenience store on the last day, which avoids the fee entirely.

Practical notes

Keep the card loaded with more than you think you need on a festival day; running out mid-transfer at a rural bus stop with no top-up point nearby is a worse problem than carrying a small unused balance home. The convenience store near a festival ground has a queue thirty people deep at six in the evening, and that is when you will discover the balance is low.

Top up in the city, not in the town. Top-up points thin out fast outside urban areas.

One card per person. You cannot pay two fares with one card at a subway gate, and trying to do so at a busy gate is the fastest way to hold up a queue.

Check the balance when you tap. The gate and the bus reader both display the remaining amount for about a second, and that is your only routine warning before the card runs out.

See How to Pay for Things in Korea for cash and card advice beyond transit.

Published and fact-checked by Ha Doo Sung · Naver travel blog (info82)

LAST UPDATED · Sep 8, 2026