This is the most excited I have been to share with you guys a huge update about life here in South Korea slash how to make your trip more convenient, easier, less stressful.

This is updated part one of a five part series all about how to take public transportation here in Seoul, South Korea.

And my old video, not only is it outdated, but we're talking about T-money cards.

And that is just, that's not the way to go anymore.

This is technically T-money cards upgraded bestie and it's called the Wow Pass.

I reached out to this company because I found the card myself.

I was like, this has to be too good to be true.

So I talked to them.

Nope, it's just that good.

So let's get into why this card is so incredible, how you can get your hands on this card, how you can get it already prepared for you.

So you just have to pick it up at the airport when you get there.

We'll get into all the details right now.

Let's get into it.

When you're coming to Seoul, South Korea, you're definitely gonna wanna take advantage of the bus and subway system because it is so convenient, it's so fast, especially when there's rush hour and a lot of traffic, you can sometimes just go right through rush hour.

You might get a little packed in sardine hour, but either way, you're probably gonna wanna take advantage of public transportation because you will get places a lot faster than if you just hop in a taxi when there's a lot of traffic outside.

So to get on public transportation, you need some sort of card that you load cash onto so that you can beep as you're getting into the subway and you beep as you get out, or you beep to get on the bus and you beep when you get out.

This is the way that you get on transportation because even public transportation, even buses, they don't really take cash anymore.

You have to have a card.

Now, before I would have told you, get a T-money card from the airport and you can buy it with cash and then you put money on it with cash.

Now I'm going to tell you that that is an option, but you 100% should get your hands on a WowPass instead because this is a T-money card and a debit card in one.

Let me quickly list off some of the reasons why this card is so good.

First of all, since it's a debit card and you can load money onto this card, instead of carrying a bunch of cash in your purse, which maybe your purse gets stolen, maybe you carry your wallet and then you end up losing your wallet.

Instead, you can put your money on this card and it truly is like a debit card in Korea with no international transaction fees and you just, you can use it everywhere.

I've been testing it myself for months.

I go to restaurants, I go to the convenience store,

I go to a store.

It's literally like a debit card.

There's an opportunity where you can literally just top up your card with a credit card or a debit card.

So you truly don't even need to have cash if you don't want to.

But honestly, I recommend topping up with local or foreign currency at any of the kiosks with no fees.

It's a better exchange rate than using credit cards.

Another great thing about this card is if you lose this card, you can lock your account.

You can get a new card reissued to you and then you don't end up losing all of the money that you had in the debit card portion of this card.

Instead of having to worry if you lose your purse or you lose your wallet, you can just have all of your money on this card and then at the very end of your trip, if you have any money left on it, you can pull it out of their WowPass machines.

You can pull the money out of the card and just take your cash back to your home country.

You will have to withdraw into Korean Won, but you can always get that exchanged back into your home currency if you would like, or keep it for your next trip when you come back to South Korea because you're probably gonna want to come back.

Another huge advantage of this card, when you go out to eat with friends and a lot of times you don't really pay for the bill separately.

A lot of the times, a lot of people, like one person will go up and swipe their card and then everybody else will maybe like Venmo them or send them money.

Once you get this card, you will download an app onto your phone and in that app, you can send people money who have the WowPass or you can send it to Korean bank accounts.

So if you make some Korean friends, you can actually send them money to their Korean bank account directly.

Another reason I love this card is because all of the WowPass machines, they take a lot.

And I mean, I'll put on the screen all of the different types of home currency that they accept, but you can directly put your home currency into the machine, load it onto this card, and then you can pull out as you want to, as you go, the Korean won.

So you're not holding a whole bunch of cash in your purse.

And the exchange rates with these cards are incredible.

Now, I'm gonna be honest, there is a little bit of a fee.

Whenever you wanna take money out, you have to spend like 1,000 won.

However, another reason why this card is incredible is because there's a whole reward system on this card.

So you can actually get cash back at a lot of stores you're probably going to anyway.

For example, Olive Young,

CU convenience stores,

E-mart 24 right now until the end of October, they have this thing where the top 10 most popular snacks in Korea.

If you buy any of those snacks, you get 30% off of the snacks.

My favorite chip in Korea, one of my favorite ramens, literally so popular.

Everybody talks about how this is like the best thing ever.

This is one of my favorite souvenirs to buy for my friends back in the States because these nuts are addictive.

I love discounts.

You guys, you're gonna need a card to get on transportation anyway.

So you might as well get the best of both worlds.

Have a backup card in case maybe your other cards don't work as you're out and about here in Korea.

You might as well take advantage of some of these rewards and get cash back for things that you were probably gonna purchase anyways.

Who doesn't go to Olive Young when they come to Korea?

Being able to send people money, there's just so many benefits.

So I wanna talk about how you can get this card.

And I just wanna quickly mention, if you do end up getting this card because I've mentioned it, there's an invitation code.

Once you get the card from the machine, you have to register it in the app.

It'll say, did anybody invite you to get this card?

If you could add my invitation code, that would mean the world to me because that does help me out just a tiny little bit.

But let me talk about how to get you this card.

Okay, if you are already in Seoul, South Korea, and you're like, I wanna get my hands on one of these cards, there's going to be an option called find a machine near you.

And as you can see, they're truly all over Korea.

We even got them in Jeju.

Guys, they're literally, they're everywhere.

But once you go to the machine, you're just gonna click buy a new card, enter all the good information, scan your little passport.

You're gonna have to put some money in there to purchase the card and then load money onto the debit portion of the card.

But if you're looking to put money on the T-money portion of the card, which is the transportation portion, you'll have to go over to the T-money card machines, which often right nearby if you're in the subway system.

So they're truly setting you up for success.

To make your life a little simpler, how you can get this card reserved for you in advance so you don't have to worry about purchasing it upon arrival, you can just pick it up.

If you go onto the WowPass website, there's going to be an option of what airport are you arriving into.

Click the terminal or the airport that you're going to arrive at, and then it'll give you options according to that terminal of how you can pick this card up yourself.

One of the ways that I really recommend is just getting the airport package.

You're getting the card for free.

You're getting the opportunity to load as much money onto the card as you would like so you don't have to worry about getting cash and bringing it and doing the exchange.

You can just load it on there in advance yourself.

You get 10,000 won put onto the T-money portion of this card so you can get directly onto transportation, like literally right away.

If you want to take the express train from the airport to Seoul Station, you get 20% off that ticket, and you get a SIM card with one of the best Korean cell phone companies here in Korea, SKT, and you get that 10% off, and you can purchase that SIM card.

I think it's for like three, five, 10, however many days, up to 30.

Physical or eSIM card, all included.

To show you how easy this is,

I pretended to be a tourist who's never been to Korea before, and I registered for myself a little airport package, and I showed up to the airport myself, and I am gonna show you here in these clips how to get there, my process.

Roll the clips, roll the clips.

I'm off to see if I can find where you guys will pick it up.

I'm in Terminal 1.

It'll almost look exactly the same for Terminal 2.

The instructions on the reservation are super clear, so just follow that, follow the map, see if I can find my new Wow Pass, because I already have one, but I wanted to pretend to get a new one so I could show you guys where to go.

If you're wondering where the gate numbers are, they're on the exit doors that go outside, and then straight across.

I have a Wow Pass.

Yeah, can I see your passport, please?

Yes.

Use your passport and then Wow Pass.

Okay.

Okay, thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

That was easy.

Where's the that was easy button?

In the airport, there is free Wi-Fi, so just connect to the free Wi-Fi.

When you get there, download the Wow Pass app, and then once you get your card handed to you, you're gonna register it on the app.

Just add my little referral code.

That would be great.

Okay, thank you.

Anyway, so you register your card.

Star, star, note, note, note.

Remember, remember, you need your passport in order to get this card.

So once you get the card, you're gonna need your passport nearby because you're gonna need to scan it or take a picture of it so that they can see that you are a foreigner, and you can only have one card per person.

So I already did it before.

Well, we tried.

These cards are one card per foreigner, so you can't buy one for somebody else.

You have to buy one for yourself.

That's it.

Now I'm gonna be fully honest with you.

This card technically has two portions to it.

There's the debit card, and then there's the T-money card.

So the debit card portion is to buy things out and about.

If you wanna get all the rewards and get all the discounts from all the stores, that's through the debit card.

And then the T-money portion is a little bit separate, but it works just like a T-money card.

If you want to take public transportation, you're gonna need cash, and you'll have to go up to the T-money card machines per usual, put your Wow Pass card down, and load money onto it.

I called up the Wow Pass people.

I said, hey, gonna be honest.

I love this card with every fiber of my being, except one portion.

Why isn't the T-money portion and the debit card portion connected?

Because that would just be so easy if you could just put all the money on and then just load it internally back and forth between the two.

And they were like, oh, we are going to have that function here in the next month or so.

So by the time you're watching this video, it might already be out.

They might be interconnected.

You don't even have to worry about having to go to the different machines.

It can all be included into the one card.

And wouldn't that be great?

And I will let you know in the comments when that happens.

Wow Pass, which is really from a company called Orange Square, they know how much you guys mean to me.

You guys are like my family, my subscribers.

Y'all, I love y'all.

And so they, in their loving kindness, said, hey, we want to give your family some free cards.

So if you just leave a comment down below and you make sure that you add the little orange emoji somewhere in the comment,

I will enter you into the opportunity to be able to win a free card that I get to send you to give you like a little promo so you don't have to buy it when you come here to Korea yourself.

So leave some sort of comment down below saying that you're excited for a free card, talking about your trip, and when you're coming here and I will go through those little orange emojis and I'll reach out to some of you guys individually and try to get you a free card for yourself.

If you found this video helpful, please give a like and leave a comment down below.

And I'm looking out for those little orange emojis in case you want a free card.

And now go on over and watch my public transportation series so you know how to take the bus, the taxi, the subway, and all the trains and all of that.

And I also think this video would be helpful if you're coming here to Korea.

I'll go see you over there in one of those videos.