Two stories from the Substandard about people using QR codes to get discounts on the MTR

• ‘Discounted rides’ for HK transportation are being sold online (10 March)
• Fare cheats exploit digital loopholes in MTR system (20 March)

The concept is that you use one payment platform (e.g. WeChat Pay) to enter the MTR and another (e.g. AlliPay) to leave, and rely upon not having anyone check whilst you are travelling (which in my experience never happens in standard class and is extremely rare even in First Class). 

I've never used these payment methods, but the article claims that there is a way to manually enter your entry or exit station in the app.  Which is convenient but seems very obviously open to abuse.  

• If you use an Octopus card and you managed to get into the system without it being recorded you won't be able to use the automatic gates to exit and have to go to the Customer Service Centre first for them to fix it.
• In London, you can always exit from the station with Contactless or an Oyster card but incomplete journeys are charged at the maximum fare - however, you can apply online to get a refund.

If they removed the feature in the two apps and charged for incomplete journeys (as in London) surely that would stop this abuse?   If I have understand the Alipay app (MTR Press Release) they do tell you the fare you have been charged, so people could go to the Customer Service Centre to complain and maybe get a refund.

My question here is who is enabling this, and how much money are they making out of it?  And how do they avoid being detected by the MTR?  All very strange.

One other thing I have noticed with Alipay is that it seems not to apply sectional fares on minibuses.  So at the start of the journey the fares are the same, but while the price on the Octopus reader drops as you get nearer to the destination, nothing changes on Alipay.  Not that I have ever seen anyone use them!  

It's more complex in London because there is daily capping, and TfL calculate the total spend for the day and deduct that early the next morning.  So you will only know about the "incomplete journey" charge by logging on to the website or checking in the TfL Go app the next day (though you ought to be alerted by a larger than expected payment going out from your account).  It's actually easy to request a refund but you do have to enter some details and there are some limits on how many refunds you can request each month.

Another problem in London is that if you tap in using a physical card and out using the same card on Google Pay or Apple Pay this creates two incomplete journeys!  Which are easily reconciled by TfL if you contact them.

I have always suspected that a lot of people in London either don't realize that they have been charged for an incomplete journey or never get round to claiming a refund.  Which is supported by this FOI request stating that were 40 million incomplete journeys in 2023 at a total cost of £231 million (average charge of £6.39).  Only around 42,000 requests for refunds were received - which is around 0.1%.  That's staggeringly low!