Unlike the hassle for me that was tracking down a prepaid sim card starter kit without an ARC, purchasing recharge cards for prepaid phones in Taiwan has been pretty painless.

Today I thought I’d post up how to go about it along with some of the local language that might be required if asking in English doesn’t work.

Unlike prepaid phone starter kits, 7-11 seems to have pretty healthy stock levels of prepaid phone recharge cards for most networks. My Carrefour prepaid phone plan comes in various monetary values ($300, $600 and $1000TWD from memory). I don’t know that much about the other phone networks but I assume you’ve got similar recharge value options when them also.

If you’re after a recharge card for your prepaid phone, when you walk into a 7-11 you want to be asking;

Wo xiang (shyoung) mai yi (network operator) yufuka.


This basically translates into ‘I’d like one (network operator) prepaid card. Oh and I’m not making that last word up, prepaid card in Chinese is said exactly as it sounds in English.

Try walking around saying that with a straight face!

(Ok so you can pronounce it properly as in yoo-foo-ka, but I still found it pretty amusing).

If you’re using the Carrefour network like I am then what you’ll want is a card that looks like the one on the right.

What I’ve found is that when you mention ‘yufuka’ the 7-11′s usually keep all their prepaid cards held together with a rubber band or something. If you don’t know the Chinese pronunciation for your phone company just have a look through the prepaid card stack until you find the right one.

I got a girl to tell me the Chinese pronunciation for Carrefour once (Ka-fo or something), but buggered if I can remember it. I haven’t had any problems thus far though so I wouldn’t get too caught up on the Chinese pronunciation of company names.


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