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"CHARGE" for "adding money" is broken English only used in Japan or some other non-English speaking countries?

I ran into "CHARGE your IC card" in Japan, which means "PUT MORE MONEY onto your traffic card".

And I also found the word "charge" related to traffic cards on some American sites such as https://portal.ct.gov/dot/programs/tap-and-ride?language=en_US, but apparently "charge" here means "ask you to pay", quite different from what I saw in Japan.

If it's broken English, what is your go-to verb for adding money to a card?

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    Paradoxically, "recharge your card" would be understood this way. Commented yesterday
  • This is partly a cultural issue, because in much of the English-speaking world, we don't really have cards that you add money to, so we simply don't have a term for doing it. One of the few of which I'm aware is the OMNY card, and the operators use the terms "load" or "reload". Commented 11 hours ago
  • @standon Or we do, but only at the very bottom rungs of the economic ladder when it comes to actual cash payment cards. You can easily buy prepaid debit cards at retail, but they have terrible fees and are used mostly by people who can't get accounts because of past debt. On the other hand for things like gift cards it's pretty common. Starbucks is one of the older examples I know of where some people keep refilling a card instead of just using the money. Commented 5 hours ago

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I suspect that terms might be quite local, perhaps even varying from city to city. In London we have the "oyster card". You would say "Top-up your oyster".

So "Top-up" is an expression for adding money to a payment card in British English.

Top-up used to be common in the US, but a quick scan of the internet suggests that current usage in the USA is that you "Reload" the card.

"Add money to the card" is long-winded, but would be understood everywhere.

Using "charge" or "recharge" is probably understandable in context, but it clashes in meaning with the use for credit cards. Charge also means "to ask for payment". So you can say "The bus driver will charge you $2", or in the passive "You will be charged $2". Also, to use a credit card you charge the credit card company when you buy something (and pay back the company at a later date). So "charge" can mean "to pay money from the card" not "add money to the card".

With the widespread adoption of contactless credit and debit cards, and phones with Google/Apple Pay, the use of pre-payment cards is becoming rare.

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  • I use a pre-payment 'travel money card' when I go to Europe, and I 'top it up' with Euros. Commented yesterday
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    Top-up used to be common in the US, but I haven't heard it in years. Commented yesterday
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    @Wastrel - no, the card has no 'top'. Cambridge Dictionary: to add more of something, especially money, to an existing amount to create the total you need Commented yesterday
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    +1. AmE speaker here. While I agree that they could work in the right context, I would be wary of using "charge" to mean "adding money to a card" - maybe "recharge" or "charge up", though. Regardless: I'd use "reload" or "top-up" first by a long shot. Commented yesterday
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    @tchrist: "top off", at least to me, has a strong implication that I'm filling the thing to its maximum capacity (also that the thing being filled is mostly-full, though that's weaker). Eg.: you might top off the oil or windshield wiper fluid in your car before a road trip, bringing the fluid level all the way to the max-fill line. For a card without a hard cap on the possible stored value, "top off" - while understandable - would not be a go-to expression. Commented 9 hours ago

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