Partnership with contactless vehicle title-transfer platform

[Provided by Korea Expressway Corporation]
[Provided by Korea Expressway Corporation]

Korea Expressway Corporation announced Friday that starting this month it will offer a service allowing used-car buyers to transfer Hi-Pass transponder ownership at the same time they complete an online vehicle title transfer — all through a single app.

Previously, used-car buyers had to separately visit a tollgate, a transponder retailer or the Korea Expressway Corporation website to update their customer information after transferring vehicle ownership — an added inconvenience on top of the title-transfer process itself.

Korea Expressway Corporation uses Hi-Pass customer data to provide various traffic-safety services, including unpaid toll notifications. When a transponder ownership transfer is missed, the new owner may not receive timely notice of unpaid tolls, potentially leading to penalty charges, while the previous owner may continue to receive overdue notices.

New vehicles are generally delivered with a registered Hi-Pass transponder, but for used cars, the rate of transponder ownership transfers at the time of vehicle title transfer has remained below 10 percent of all vehicles changing hands.

In 2025, only 340,000 of the approximately 3.91 million registered used cars — just 8.7 percent — had their transponder ownership transferred.

The new service addresses this by linking with Kabang, a contactless vehicle title-transfer platform, so that users can complete both the vehicle ownership registration and the Hi-Pass transponder transfer in one step through the Kabang app. The transfer proceeds only after the customer's prior consent, and personal information is encrypted and securely managed.

Korea Expressway Corporation has also completed system integration for Hi-Pass ownership transfers with used-car trading platforms including Hyundai and Kia certified used cars, K Car and KB Chachacha, and is preparing to link with Encar through a separate agreement.

"With this system integration, used-car buyers can have their Hi-Pass transponder ownership transfer completed automatically with just a single consent on the Kabang app," a Korea Expressway Corporation official said. "We will continue to expand convenient services that proactively identify and eliminate inconveniences so that the public does not have to keep track of these things themselves."


hss@heraldcorp.com