A staffer works at the customer service center at the Gangxia North Station of Shenzhen Metro. Courtesy of Shenzhen Metro Group
It just got a lot easier for international visitors to travel by subway in Shenzhen thanks to the introduction of intelligent point-of-sale (POS) terminals in all of the city's Metro stations, according to the Shenzhen Metro Group.
The POS terminals, which support VISA, Master Card, Discover Card, American Express, Diners Club, and JCB, also allow passengers to make payments using the digital RMB wallet on mobile phone.
In response to the diverse payment preferences of international passengers, the Shenzhen Metro Group initially installed POS terminals at Luohu Station, Huanggang Checkpoint Station, Wenjin Station, Airport Station, Futian Station, and Shenzhen North Station.
This successful pilot program paved the way for the installation of 440 intelligent POS devices across 391 customer service centers throughout the Metro network.
As of Oct. 10, more than 600 transactions with non-Chinese cards had been processed.
"It used to be very inconvenient for passengers from abroad if they did not exchange cash in time or did not have mobile payment tools like WeChat Pay. Now they can directly use non-Chinese bank cards to purchase tickets and ride the subway," said Bai Yunhai, director of the Shenzhen Metro Group's ticket office.
In May of this year, the Shenzhen Metro Group debuted a multilingual intelligent customer service terminal at Airport Station, offering real-time translation services, ticket inquiries, and travel planning assistance to international visitors. This tech-heavy machine — the first of its kind in China — supports over 10 languages and dialects, including English, Japanese, Korean, French, Russian, German, Mandarin, and Cantonese.
At present, Shenzhen's urban rail transit network includes 17 operational lines. An average of 8.037 million passengers use the network daily, which accounts for 73% of the city's public transport usage.