How to purchase and top-up a Public Transportation

Purchase:

The easiest way to buy your first card is from the ticket office of any Metro Station in Shanghai . There are also 1900 selling points throughout Shanghai where you can buy the card, but it might be a bit difficult for a new comer to tell which is authorised and which is fake.

For the first purchase, there are three face values you can choose: 100RMB, 200RMB and 500RMB, in which 20/30RMB deposit is included. For example, you give 100RMB and then get a face value of 100RMB card. You actually have 70RMB to spend and the 20RMB will be stored in the card as a deposit.

There are two type of card: normal card and special card (issued for some special events, occasions. Usually has a special design on the card). The normal card asks for 20RMB refundable deposit while the special one asks for 30RMB non-refundable deposit.

Top-up

Not matter what kind of card you purchase (normal or special), how much of the face value the card has when you first purchase it, you can always top up your card via the following three way.

- Metro Station: you can top up your card either by the ticket machine with top-up function at the Metro Station or go to the ticket office to have the staff to top it up for you

- Bank: Currently three banks provide the top-up service at their self-service centre. (Shanghai Pudong Development Bank, Communication Bank, China Construction Bank) if you have a bank account with any of these three banks, you can use their self-service machinese to top up your transportation card.

- Convenience Store: two convenience store chain in Shanghai offer top-up service: Kedi and Buddies. They have a lot of stores throughout Shanghai . Make sure to find the nearest one for you.

Terminate and return the card

If you would like to terminate and return the card, to get the deposit back, you can take it to any of the following office. If the remaining value less than 10RMB, you can get the refund back right away free of charge. If it is between 10RMB and 2000RMB, you will be charged by 5% of the remaining value as handling fee. For value more than 2000RMB, it takes three working days to process with 5% charge fee.