Absolutely but for effort of adding a line into their signup form they can take peoples money for doing virtually nothing with very little chance of people complaining. If the government mandated the MTR allowed people to pay by NFC credit card or Octopus multi-day tourists probably wouldn't bother getting a card.Original Post Deleted
@bdw - Thanks for the tip. Would be interesting to see if I can use this for *all* household expenses AND mortgage payment. I do owe you a few beers for this one, regardless of it working for me or not. Neat hack.
That might make HK loose that freest economy in the world "award".If the government mandated the MTR allowed people to pay by NFC credit card
You can also use the octopus app to withdraw money from your octopus ($500 withdrawal per day) up to 4 cards. This gives you an extra $2000 a day or ~$60,000 a month. Transfer the money back into your bank account for whatever you want to use it for.
Also depending on your credit card you can earn reward miles. So for me I gain 10,000 miles a month.
There is a 0.5% transaction fee after the first $5000 when transferring money from the octopus app back into your bank account, but thats'a very minimal considering all those asia miles