About 2.9 million holders of student EasyCards will be required to register their cards starting next year to continue receiving discounts on bus fares, the Taipei City Government said yesterday.
Student EasyCard holders receive a NT$3 discount on NT$15 fares.
At present, students can purchase a student EasyCard at all MRT information centers just by showing their student ID to the staff.
However, by September next year, the city’s Department of Transportation wants all student EasyCards to be registered because many users have abused the discount system by continuing to use their student cards after they graduate.
“Registered EasyCards will better protect the rights of our student users and prevent people taking advantage of the discount policy. We will try to simplify the registration procedures,” department Commissioner Wang Sheng-wei (王聲威) said at a press conference at Taipei City Hall.
Taipei EasyCard Corp general manager Cheng You-chin (鄭有欽) said students should purchase a new EasyCard at MRT stations or convenience stores and then send an application form and copies of their ID card to the EasyCard Corp to register their card.
Cheng said it would take about 14 days to complete the registration process.
The company is applying to the government to be able to use an electronic registration process, and is negotiating with the Ministry of Justice and the Financial Supervisory Commission to allow students to send personal information via e-mail or mobile apps, he said.
The e-registration system should be approved in June. Once it is, the company will announce online registration methods, he said.
The EasyCard, launched on June 12, 2002, is the sixth-largest circulated card of its kind in the world.
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