The maximum value for a single Octopus card will be raised from HKD1,000 to 3,000 later this year, according to Octopus Holdings Chief Executive Sunny Cheung.
Cheung said that the change will be made when the company renews its licence this November, SCMP reports.
The much-touted cards are integral in day-to-day Hong Kong life, having provided swift and seamless transactions since their inception in 1997 – which makes Octopus cards 19 years old! Blimey.
And they’re certainly popular – apparently, the average Hongkonger owns “almost four” Octopus cards (what, one for every pair of arms?).
It looks like the “doods” over at Octopus Holdings are going to keep changing how we conduct our business in daily life, too – economists quoted by the SCMP predicted that the Octopus’ heightened maximum value would “significantly reshape” electronic payment and shopping patterns in Hong Kong.
For example, apparently “hundreds of thousands” of Hong Kong users have used their Octopus cards to make payments on Taobao (a.k.a. Chinese eBay) since the option was rolled out in 2014, with an average spend of HKD100 to HKD200 per eight-armed transaction.
Part of the Octopus’ allure was attributed to its comparatively lower processing fees, which see consumers shelling out 1.5 percent in charges to “dood” their way through a purchase, as opposed to the three percent that traditional credit cards charge.
It certainly looks like Hong Kong consumers are in favour of moving towards a cashless society, eight tentacles at a time.
On another note: owners of first-generation Octopus cards may begin to notice a strange additional beep during transactions (characterised by The Standard as “di-dood”), as Octopus Holdings pushes for said card holders to turn the old faithfuls in for shiny (and free!) new upgrades.
While the practically vintage cards will still work for regular transactions, they don’t support some of the more newfangled functions on Octopus’ smartphone app. At the moment, only 80,000 (or four percent) of the two million first-gen (or OG OCtopus, as we like to call them) cards have been returned since last summer.
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