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Happy Holidays from South Korea! I'm currently visiting the in-laws for the holidays, and due to the occasion, I decided to do a bit of a dive into the Chai card. So let me preface this post first with the fact that I am a Korean American, and although I've lived in Korea for several years, I have not since the time that the Chai card has been
What is the Chai card?
Chai is a crypto-backed card which takes people KRW (Korean won) and to many cardholders, converts their fiat to KRT. Run on the Terra system, this allows for many benefits for not just consumers, but business owners as well, as they are hit with less surcharges and ultimately spending less money. The Chai card is like the cool card you've never heard of, even if you live in Korea. And I'm serious about that, no one I know over here has really even heard of it. Or if they've heard of it, they know if it as the card that gives you a lot of random discounts at select stores on select days. But for those of you who have been following Terra for awhile, probably know of Chai as the reason why you get random amounts of KRT for staking your Luna.
For the average Chai consumer, they see the immediate benefit for gaining these thunder points, for which they can spend on utilizing different types of discounts on different days. Usually these deals unlock around 11AM, and cardholders can redeem their thunder points for pretty significant discounts at local partners (i.e. Nike, McDonald's).
OK. So you might be thinking..."a lot of credit cards have random bonuses, What's the big deal?"
Well...Korean credit/debit cards in general kinda suck.
In general, Korean credit benefits are horrible, at least they are compared to the States or to Europe. Now don't get me wrong, there are some cards with some really niche bonuses out there which I'm sure people are taking advantage of out there, but there's generally no signup bonuses, and you'll be hard pressed to find a cashback card that will give you a comparable fraction of the points that an average joe credit does in the States, at often times just fractions of a cent, or less than 1% cashback for everyday purchases. No joke, I went into Woori Bank just a week ago, and the signup bonus they were offering for one of their flagship cards was a 5-pack of Shin Ramen.
This is part of the reason why the Chai card has been such a hit--the card has great benefits, and on top of that, it's normally been extremely hard to get. Up until recently, even though you were technically able to send an application to Chai through their , good luck with that because people have been waiting for several months without a response. One other alternative was for people to get formal invite code from someone who already owns the card, but this was extremely limited as well, as users were only able to give out one. Due to the rarity of invites, it even created a second-hand market and list of scams for people trying to buy and sell them.
What makes these even more awesome? KRT Integration
Now this is what makes the card truly amazing, because of how well it's integrated with the whole Terra system. The funny part is, is that many users have not even a clue that this is what their card is doing, and instead they're seeing the card because of the discounts you can get at but the fact that it's stacked so well with KRW, as well as all the benefits of the Terra system, make this card truly valuable. With such cheap transaction costs, it's no wonder why there's been so much work and talk surrounding Forex opportunities. This also has the capabilities to completely revolutionize the remittances system when people are wanting to send money back and forth from home. Because my son and wife are both Korean citizens, it'd be extremely useful to be able to move money between currencies. And obviously while it might be easy to turn USD into KRT, without a Chai card, it's a challenge to move KRW to KRT.
The Chai Application process has recently changed!
Instead of the normal 1-person invite system, people are now supposedly able qualify to get the card if they are able to accumulate 20 Thunder boost points, which they can do by spending money through one of their partners on the app. And because my wife and I are going to be in Korea for at least a few weeks longer, there's plenty of food-delivery businesses we can go through to be able to accumulate 20 easily. Right now the going rate is roughly 2 Thunders for every 10,000KRW (Roughly 9USD), therefore if we spend our money wisely, we should be able to qualify after spending roughly 100,000KRW (USD). My apologies for those not living in Korea, for as far as I know, it's only possible to utilize the Chai app by having a Korean telephone number, which you can really only obtain if you have a Korean registration ID number (like a SSN) or if you're there for foreign diplomatic purposes.
Have you had any experiences with the Chai card? Let me know in the comments below because i'd love to hear about it! Otherwise, we're going to start earning our "Thunder boosts" tomorrow! Wish us luck!
