Why do I have to tap my card again when getting off the bus?
Short answer
Because the transfer discount depends on it. Miss the tap on the way out and every leg of the trip is billed as its own fare.
Two readers, two taps
Boarding, you tap the reader beside the driver's seat. Before getting off, you tap the one by the back door. The city's guidance is blunt about the second one: the card must be tapped when getting off.
The subway works the same way at the gates, which is why the habit transfers between the two. Seoul treats bus and subway as one fare system rather than two, and the system only knows where your journey ended if you tell it.
What the second tap is buying
The integrated fare applies only when you tap both on and off each mode of transport. Get that right and a bus-to-subway or bus-to-bus journey is charged as one trip with a transfer, up to four transfers in a day.
Get it wrong and the discount is gone — each ride reverts to its own separate fare. Nothing beeps at you about it and nothing stops you leaving. You find out later, if at all.
The clock and the two exceptions
The transfer window is 30 minutes from the tap that ended your previous ride, stretching to an hour between 9pm and 7am. That is generous enough for a walk between stops and tight enough that a coffee in between breaks it.
Two things do not count. Boarding the same bus route number again is not a transfer, and neither is anything past the daily limit of four.
Good to know
- Miss the exit tap and each ride is charged separately
- Transfer window is 30 minutes, or an hour between 9pm and 7am
- The same bus route number does not count as a transfer
