The Taipei City Government yesterday announced an implementation plan that would require students to register for student EasyCards, which enable them to receive a NT$3 discount on NT$15 bus fares.
“Given cases of non-students using student EasyCards, starting in December, Taipei, New Taipei City and Keelung plan to complete the introduction of student EasyCards requiring registration,” said Huang Hsin-hao (黃信豪), head of the planning section of the city’s Public Transportation Office.
Using Taipei as an example, Huang said that last year, 10.3 percent of student EasyCard users were unable to present a student ID when asked.
Data provided by the office showed that about 500,000 of the 843,000 middle and senior-high school and college students in the three cities have student IDs that also function as EasyCards. The remainder use special student EasyCards to receive the discount, Huang said.
Some of these cards have chips but do not require registration.
However, starting on Thursday next week, all student EasyCards sold will have chips that can be used for registration, Huang said.
New student EasyCards purchased after December will have to be registered within 20 days for users to qualify for the discount, he said. After October next year, all unregistered cards will cease to provide a student discount.
Huang added that the city intends to streamline the registration process for student EasyCards, allowing users to directly upload photos of their student ID. Previously, registration required mailing in ID photocopies.
“We hope those with student IDs will purchase student EasyCards and that registration can protect the credit which students load onto their cards,” Taipei EasyCard Corp general manager Cheng You-chin (鄭有欽) said.
According to the EasyCard Corp’s public relations department, all expenditures which occur three hours after registered EasyCards are reported as lost can be refunded to their owner.
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