If you have ever booked a ticket, please help.
A foreign tourist visiting Korea recently posted on an overseas online community saying they failed to book an express bus ticket. The person said they tried to book several times, but the message "Please re-enter your information" kept appearing at the payment stage. That was because online payment on "Kobus," the integrated express bus booking platform, was difficult with cards issued overseas.
Such inconveniences are expected to ease going forward. Tmoney Co., which operates Kobus, decided to introduce overseas card payment for online bookings of express and intercity buses.
◇Express in Aug., intercity in Sep.… Kobus to add overseas card payments
According to Tmoney Co. on the 1st, Kobus plans to run a service starting next month that allows users to pay for express bus tickets on its website with overseas cards without signing up for membership. For intercity bus bookings, a plan is underway to introduce overseas card payments with a target of September.
Foreign tourists have long faced difficulties booking express and intercity bus tickets online. While train tickets could be purchased with overseas cards on the KORAIL website and app, overseas card payments for bus tickets were restricted. As a result, foreign tourists had to use proxy booking platforms or go to terminals in person to buy tickets.
The issue of purchasing bus tickets has been cited as one of the main inconveniences foreign tourists face when traveling in Korea. Yanolja analyzed three years (2023–2025) of Korea travel-related text posts on the U.S. online community Reddit and found that major pain points centered on digital (27.8%), transportation (13.1%), and payment (12%). The Korea Tourism Organization's transportation information team also received 84 reports related to bus inconveniences over the past year.
◇The "bus booking barrier" blocking foreign tourists from regional travel
The bus ticket purchase problem for foreign tourists has been a hurdle to revitalizing tourism outside the greater Seoul area. Many trips to areas beyond the rail network or to small and mid-sized cities require taking a bus, but online payment barriers remained.
According to the Korea Association of Bus Terminal Operators, the number of bus uses by foreigners in the first quarter of this year (Jan.–Mar.) totaled 382,000. Considering that about 4.76 million foreign tourists visited Korea during the same period, many say regional travel by bus remains limited.
Foreign tourists' destinations are also concentrated in the greater Seoul area. Based on mobile carrier data, the Korea Tourism Organization estimated that over the past year (June 2025–May 2026), Seoul, Incheon, and Gyeonggi accounted for 56.9% of foreign visits. By contrast, some regions hovered around 1%, including Gwangju at 0.6%, Daejeon at 0.7%, Daegu at 1.2%, and North Chungcheong and North Jeolla at 1.7%.
Once the new service launches, foreign tourists will be able to book express bus tickets with overseas cards directly on the Kobus website without using separate proxy platforms. However, the integrated transportation platform app Tmoney GO still does not support overseas card registration and payment, so further improvements are needed for mobile convenience.
Experts say the introduction of overseas card payments could be a starting point for broadening foreign tourists' regional travel. They also note that improvements must follow not only for bus bookings but across the domestic payment infrastructure.
Jeong Ransu, a professor of tourism at Hanyang University, said, "Major cities like Seoul have relatively more public transit options, but the share of bus use is higher when traveling to regional areas," adding, "If the online payment environment improves for foreign tourists, it will also help revitalize regional tourism."