Hong Kong's Octopus Card Now Supports Apple Pay

Weird name for a card. But it’s nice to see more cards accepted. I wish more store cards were supported though.

From Wikipedia:

The Cantonese ('https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cantonese') name for the Octopus card, Baat Daaht Tùng (Chinese ('https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traditional_Chinese_characters'): 八 ('https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E5%85%AB')達 ('https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E9%81%94')通 ('https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E9%80%9A')), translates literally as "eight-arrived pass", where Baat Daaht may translate as "reaching everywhere". Less literally though the meaning is taken as the "go-everywhere pass". It was selected by the head of the MTR Corporation, the parent company of Octopus Cards Limited, in a naming competition held in 1996.[15] ('https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Octopus_card#cite_note-Milestones-15') The number eight refers to the cardinal and ordinal directions ('https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cardinal_direction'), and the four-character idiom ('https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chengyu') sei tùng baat daaht (Chinese ('https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traditional_Chinese_characters'): 四 ('https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E5%9B%9B')通 ('https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E9%80%9A')八 ('https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E5%85%AB')達 ('https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E9%81%94')), a common expression loosely translated as "reachable in all directions".[16] ('https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Octopus_card#cite_note-16') It is also considered a lucky number in Chinese culture ('https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Numbers_in_Chinese_culture#Eight'), and the phrase baat daaht can possibly be associated with the similar-sounding faat daaht, which means "getting wealthy" (Chinese ('https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traditional_Chinese_characters'): 發 ('https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E7%99%BC')達 ('https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E9%81%94')) in Cantonese.

The English ('https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_language') name Octopus card was also selected from the naming competition. Coincidentally, the English name coincides with the number eight in the Chinese name, since an octopus ('https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Octopus') has eight tentacles ('https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tentacle').[17] ('https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Octopus_card#cite_note-MilestonesEng-17') The logo used on the card features a Möbius strip ('https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M%C3%B6bius_strip') in the shape of an infinity symbol ('https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infinity_symbol').

Octopus is a brilliant name for anything.

I can confirm it worked. If you’re not currently in HK, just change your iPhone region in Settings to HK, add the card and then change it back :)

PS: Pretty cool that the iPhone can read the Octopus card




https://www.apple.com/hk/en/apple-pay/octopus/

Great it worked! I changed my region to Hong Kong and then was able to add transfer my existing Octopus card to my phone. Now I am ready for my next visit to Hong Kong.
Sadly it looks like you can only add money via Apple Pay with cards from HK for now, I hope they will change that soon like with Suica where you can use every card in your wallet to top up.

Thanks for that. However, the link says to replace cards that don't have the last number in brackets. Mine is in brackets, so maybe my problem is a different one. It could be that it needs re-activating as it's not been used in a while. I'm sure I used it while transiting last November (to buy an ice-cream from 7-11!) but maybe I used cash. Can't remember now.

If it needs reactivating, you can do so by doing a balance enquiry with the Octopus app. Apparently, they had an outage yesterday too.

https://www.octopus.com.hk/en/notice/apple-pay.html

Same issue. I tried to add the special edition Black Octopus card after changing the region to HK and was thrown the same error message.

It's odd as the card was only acquired last year so it ought to be compatible.

You can only transfer on-loan cards. That's probably because the physical card is permanently deactivated and they didn't want complaints about people ruining their sold cards/ornaments/watch/whatever.

https://www.octopus.com.hk/en/consumer/customer-service/faq/apple-pay/get.html#transferCardType