Coronavirus roller coaster: Octopus card usage drops for fast food, transport, but booms at Hong Kong’s grocery stores
- The city’s largest e-payment provider said public transport transactions were down 40 per cent in February as Hongkongers stayed home
- Panic buying saw usage at supermarkets surge, however, while small merchants joined the network amid a new-found distaste for handling cash
Spending on transport and fast food among Hong Kong’s Octopus card users has dropped sharply during the coronavirus epidemic, but panic buying of rice, toilet rolls and surgical masks has cushioned the shortfall, the city’s top e-payment provider told the Post.
Octopus Cards, which issues the namesake plastic card and has an 80 per cent share of the city’s stored-value facility market, recorded a drop of more than 40 per cent year-on-year in public transport transactions in February as hundreds of thousands of workers and students stayed home and social gatherings were avoided, sales and marketing director Rita Li said.
But while usage has been down, more retailers are simultaneously choosing to adopt the card as consumers become reluctant to handle cash amid infection fears.
Li said the number of smaller shops joining the Octopus system, many of which had not previously considered using e-payments, had jumped as much as threefold since the epidemic began.
“There are more merchants who operate a single shop or eatery turning to our e-payment system, some stand-alone stores in the countryside are in talks to join as well,” she said in an interview on Friday.