Get your own personalised Easycard in Taipei

Looking for a personalised souvenir to bring home with you on your trip to Taiwan? Why not consider getting a personalised transport card!

In the past few years, Taiwan’s Easycard has been upping their game by releasing a lot of rather whacky designs for their transport card. And, by a lot, we mean a lot. Ranging from collaborations with popular franchises and IPs to 3D miniature items of daily items, the Easycard have transformed from simply a transport card to collectibles.

And in Easycard’s latest move to get people to collect these transport cards, Easycard has launched a service where you can print and customise your own Easycard! You get the option to upload your own photos and have them printed on the cards.

The concept isn’t actually new - South Korea had implemented it with their T-money cards a few years back; and today, you can finally do the same with Taiwan’s transport cards.

What exactly are these personalised transport cards?

While Taiwan’s Easycard is primarily a transport card, it can be used in many places outside of simply transport. Rather similar to South Korea’s T-money card or Japan’s SUICA card, the Easycard is accepted as a payment method in many stores and services across Taiwan.

The personalised transport card essentially allows you to upload a photo of your choice, and get it printed on a transport card. You will also be able to add a caption of your choice, or to select one of the preset frames to decorate your card.

As of writing, the frames available include a bubble tea design (definitely representative of Taiwan), a couple design, and 12 designs each corresponding to a horoscope sign.

How to get a personalised transport card?

You can get a personalised transport card by printing them at the machines. These machines are currently only available at these three metro stations in Taipei:

• Nanjing Fuxing (near exit 7)
• Zhongxiao Fuxing (inside the station)
• Zhongshan station (near exit R8)

There are also plans to make these machines available in the popular stations like Ximen and Taipei Main Station, but they are not available as of writing.

Note that the machines only operate from 11am to 8pm daily.

It is fairly easy to get a personalised transport card:

1. Go to the site omycard. (You can change the language of the site by selecting the dropdown button in the menu)
2. Choose if you want to have your photo printed in a vertically or horizontally (though this selection would only actually matter if you are using one of the frames)
3. Choose the photo that you would like to have printed and upload it.
4. Resize or rearrange the photo as required, and select a frame of your choice or add a caption that you want. Note that emojis are not supported, and if you used an emoji in the caption it would be printed as gibberish.
5. Press save. You will be given a QR code. Save the QR code as this QR code will be what you need to access your card design at the machines.
6. Now, you are ready to head to the machines. When you are at the machine, simply scan your QR code. You will be able to preview your card, and once you are happy with it, you can go ahead and pay for it to get it printed!

How much is a card, and what payment methods are available?

A personalised card will cost you 399 NTD.

You can pay for your card using your credit cards (note that mobile payment is not supported). Alternatively, you can also pay for it using your existing Easycard (if you have one); or if you have Line Pay set up, you could also use Line Pay to pay for your card.

Tips for getting your personalised transport card

1. It is very important that you upload your photo and get your QR code before going to the machines, so that you don’t hog up the machine.
2. Choosing the right photo to print can take some time. After all, you might have a lot of good photos that you want printed (yes, we spent hours choosing what we wanted printed).
3. It is recommended that you print the photo in a portrait mode, especially if you will have a caption. The caption doesn’t work as well in a landscape photo due to the orientation of the text.
4. A caption is strongly recommended - our card that came without a caption feels a tad too bare compared to the one where we had a caption.

   

5. The local Taiwan news had reported snaking queues where people waited up to 3 hours to get their cards printed; but we did not experience that and managed to get our cards printed in less than 5 minutes in line. Of the three stations where the machines are currently available, Zhongxiao Fuxing station is likely to be the busiest; so you might want to check out the other stations to be safe.
6. There is a restriction in place where each person can only print up to 5 cards (to prevent the queues from getting too long).

What do people usually print?

Not sure what to print? Here are some of the most common things that we have seen printed:

• Idols
• Anime / Manga characters and panels
• Friends and family
• Pets
• Photos you took on your trip in Taiwan!