Can I pay for Ttareungi with a foreign card, or do I need a Korean one?
I arrive in Seoul next month for a three-week stay and want to use the public bikes rather than taxis. I will not have a Korean bank account, only a Visa card issued in Spain and a roaming phone number. I cannot tell from the app whether registration will accept either of those, and what the alternative is if it does not.
1 Answer
It depends on which registration route you use, and a roaming number is the bigger obstacle rather than the card.
The official Ttareungi app separates member, non-member and foreign visitor routes, and identity verification and accepted payment cards differ between them. So the answer is not a single yes or no: an overseas card works on some routes and not others. Do not assume a Spanish Visa card will be accepted everywhere in the app just because it worked on one screen.
The part that stops most visitors is the phone number. Korean identity verification generally expects a Korean number, and a roaming number from Spain often fails at that step even when the card would have been fine. That is why people install the app, get through two screens, and then stall.
For a three-week stay you have two realistic options. Activate a Korean SIM on arrival, which resolves verification for Ttareungi and for most other Korean apps you will want, and is the route worth taking if you plan to use the bikes regularly. Or look into the short-term passes aimed at foreign visitors, which exist precisely for this situation. Check the current terms on the official site at bikeseoul.com, which has English guidance.
Two practical notes for planning. Confirm before you rely on it rather than at the dock on your first morning, because discovering the verification problem then costs you the day. And check the return dock situation near where you are staying: in busy areas docks fill up, so returning is occasionally harder than renting. The full rental and return process is set out in our Ttareungi article.