▲ Provided by foreigni9.com

Since the reform of the public transportation system of Seoul, T-money, a type of card that people use when they are using transportation services, has been one of the things people in urban areas usually bring with them when they go out. However, many of its characteristics, in particular how it functions, are not well-known to the general public.

 
T-money has one function: to provide customers with convenience when using public transportation, negating the need of buying a ticket every single time. At the customer end, the user first needs to “charge” his or her T-money card at a machine in a transportation station or convenience store, and then, as most people know, swipes it where required
 
In terms of T-money’s mechanism, however, it is not that simple. Inside a T-money, there is a Radio Frequency (RF) chip that includes a small central process unit (CPU) and memory storage space with antennas along the edges of the card. When a T-money card is swiped, the CPU processes the signal received by the antenna from the terminal and transmits the recorded data to the storage space. After the terminal machine checks the data, it sends signals that tell the CPU inside the card to store new data, such as when and where its user takes a bus. The amazing thing is that this whole process is carried out in less than one second.
 
There are thousands of possibilities for the T-money card in the future. Maybe it will become small enough to be painlessly inserted into a human hand, preventing situations such as when passengers are not able to get on a bus because they forgot to bring their card. This might seemed far-fetchedodiles.
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