Octopus card

English

Etymology

Coined in a naming competition. Like its Chinese counterpart 八達通 / 八达通 (baat³ daat⁶ tung¹), it references the number eight, as an octopus has eight tentacles.

Noun

Octopus card (plural Octopus cards)

1. A contactless smart card, introduced in 1997, used as a form of payment in Hong Kong, originally for the mass transit system, but now widely used for public transport and other retail transactions.
   • 2010, Andrew Dembina, Hong Kong Select, Singapore: GeoCenter, →ISBN, page 186:

     Bus routes cover every part of the territory. […] Octopus cards or exact change must be paid on entry.

   • 2013, Fred Hiatt, Nine Days, New York: Delacorte Press, →ISBN, page 201:

     But when I pressed my Octopus card to the fare machine, it answered with an angry buzz, like I'd answered wrong in a quiz show.

   • 2022, Tom McDonald, Holy Hoi Ki Shum, Kwok Cheung Wong, quoting Man Yee, “Mediated Money and Social Relationships Among Hong Kong Cross-Boundary Students”, in Elisabetta Costa, Patricia G. Lange, Nell Haynes, Jolynna Sinanan, editors, The Routledge Companion to Media Anthropology, Abingdon: Routledge, →DOI, →ISBN, page 310:

     Normally speaking, on a Monday my Octopus card will have HK$500–600 ($64–77 USD) stored inside, by Friday there will be very little left.

Translations

contactless smart card used in Hong Kong

• Chinese:

  Cantonese: 八達通 / 八达通 (baat³ daat⁶ tung¹)

  Mandarin: 八達通 / 八达通 (zh) (Bādátōng)