Tencent’s “traffic code” is a solution, but passengers have to re-open the payment every time they arrive in a new city, and they cannot enjoy the bus discount system. (For example, you can enjoy a 40% discount after 15 bus trips in Guangzhou.)
But these two days, WeChat just launched a new mini-progran which seems to solve these two problems at the same time, making the bus more efficient and more affordable. This is the “Tencent Ride Card” 「腾讯乘车卡」.
After searching for “Tencent Ride Card” on WeChat and clicking on official WeChat account, you can see the entrance of the mini-program at the main page of the official account. Here comes the instructions when you click on the mini-program.
According to the page display, “Tencent Ride Card” can only be used for Android phones that support NFC.
Just click into the mini-program and the system will tell you whether you are enable to this feature. (Currently iOS users are temporarily unavailable).
Eligible users need to open a confidential payment to use this feature. After the activation, the balance will be automatically recharged when it is too low.
After opening this service, you have an online bus card. Card opening is free for a limited time now, but if you want to take a bus, you need to recharge at least 10 yuan. You can use this card to take the bus after recharging.
The provinces and cities can be used as follows:
You can enjoy more than 200 city rides at one time. The strength of Tencent’s ride card is based on the long-established interconnection system in China. After obtaining an online bus card, users can not only use it in multiple cities, but also enjoy the local bus preferential policies.
When taking the bus, open the “Tencent Ride Card” mini-program and close your phone to the gate machine. Stay for about 1 second to complete the payment. However, the current online bus card does not yet support offline use, it also requires a good network environment.
User experience
Squirrel Wu is one of the beta users of the Tencent Ride Card. He said that the online bus card used in Nanchang does enjoy the same 25% discount as the local bus card. In the course of using it, he has not encountered any situation that cannot be used.
When talking about the experience of using the new bus card, he said that this mini-program is the same as a normal card, and there is no feeling of getting stuck when used.
Of course, he also hopes that this small defect that can not be used offline can be resolved as soon as possible. In addition, he is very satisfied with the new bus card and will consider continuing to use it even after the end of the internal test.