You don’t to pay if you have the time to go to their office. I did it in the post office and the only way was paying 200 and put that I lost my card.
Don’t worry. There’s still ample opportunity for me to get irritated - the next thing is probably going to be me struggling to remember how to register the new card with the NHI app, then shortly after seeing that my info didn’t get carried over anyway. 
https://twitter.com/MMcCreesh/status/1718871113529516109
In replies people chime in with similar experiences.
When setting up Line Pay one is asked to make an iPass Money account as well. It is somehow linked. I think I already updated my ID number with Line Pay, but that is not passed to iPass Money.
The linked account in iPassMoney now does not work and I can’t add my bank accounts due to ID number mismatch.
I used the contact email at the english version of the site and was ghosted. 
Now I used the Chinese version contact form and it seems to move forward. Will see if they can fix it.
I currently have some money I received and can’t withdraw it. Don’t want to spend it with iPassMoney QR code pay.
Years have passed and occasionally I am still haunted by this great ID number change.
Can someone remind me of one benefit (just one would be fine) that has come out of this number change? Please?
Guy
so far, nothing, since we are still different from citizens, so there is no actual change. like saying, oh you we need to change this from poop to turd. still shit is.
Somebody somewhere potentially made money and kickbacks from millions of new ARC and NHI cards? Kaching.
I wouldn’t think much further than that about it.
And if people don’t think this kind of thing doesn’t happen in real life then they haven’t worked with ‘high officials’ before.
my man, I am Italian and lived in HK. the cahoots profiting from “beneficial changes” by the gov are countless. I am completely disillusioned
It fulfilled its purpose, I think – a few press releases and news articles showing how foreigner friendly Taiwan is, without them needing to make any meaningful changes.
Oh, and Freddie Höglund (from the European Chamber of Commerce) got a novelty giant APRC. It’s something!
https://taiwantoday.tw/news.php?unit=2,6,10,15,18&post=191015
Sorry, those photo stunts were a thing before the number change, so I don’t think this counts.
Guy
The English contact email actually works, but it’s a bit slow. They called me back and took all my information. A few days later I received an email.
感謝您來信提供相關證明文件，您的iPASS MONEY帳戶居留證號已為您更改為新式居留證上之統一號碼，請以您的帳號、密碼登入iPASS MONEY帳戶即可。
Now I can link my bank accounts and withdraw the balance.
It’s always possible that someone made money off this debacle, but my understand of what happened is that well-intentioned but non-technicnal foreign residents including the ECCT had been petitioning the government for years to change the format of the ID numbers. They genuinely believed that it was as simple as just changing the format to an initial capital letter followed by 9 digits. They did not understand that other information was encoded in the digits.
Well-intentioned officials at the NDC who apparently also did not understand this wanted to help. They prevailed upon the Ministry of Interior to make the change. The MOI said many times ‘are you sure. This is going to be very inconvenient.’
Everyone said they were sure it was worth it since it would fix the problem of ARC numbers not being accepted. The MOI said fine and the decision was announced with a sample ARC. The MOI never disclosed the meanings encoded in the numbers that included whether the person was a foreign national. The number on the sample was incompatible with the checksum code used all over the internet.
More technically minded members of the foreign community noticed (including on this forum) and questions were asked but by then the bureaucratic machine was in motion and it was too late.
There is a lesson in here somewhere about well-meaning foreigners suggesting what seem like obvious solutions and the government going along with them without a careful policy making process that might have caught this in time. It’s pretty dispiriting.
May I ask if this line is from your imagination, or have you heard this reported directly from the relevant authorities?
Indeed it is.
Guy
It is not from my imagination but I did not hear it directly. I’m pretty sure the account I gave is more or less what happened.
So . . . any source(s)?
I apologize for being obtuse. I simply can’t imagine the MOI playing this so straightforwardly when gross incompetence or outright maliciousness appear to be simpler explanations.
Guy
Even if it happened that way.
Such projects always need to hear experts on the proposal and consider all potential problems. Government can’t just let well intentioned amateurs decide on such matters.
They were not even aware until later that all NHI cards would need to be changed as well.
Passed a new ‘law’ to cover NHI renewal cost a year later without being retroactive.
Sorry no.
As for gross incompetence or maliciousness, my opinion/mpression is that the MOI was very tired of hearing these complaints and knew perfectly well that this would not work but also that its failure would put an end to the complaints once and for all. In the sense that people might complain but no one would ever dare to suggest a change again. This may well have been a beautiful example of Yes Minister bureaucratic guile served up Taiwan style.
Yeah. NWOHRs had xA for men and xB for women while xC was for foreign men and xD was for foreign women.
They were unified under the current structure.
My ARC number was a nice MCxxxxxxx
Very much agree. Some of the people in the ‘third world traffic’ thread’ or the ‘how can we make Taiwanese people stop for pedestrians’ one would do well to reflect on whether they really understand what needs to be done or if maybe the MOTC and Taiwanese experts might not be wrong about everything.
They were not even aware until later that all NHI cards would need to be changed as well.
I’m pretty sure this was well understood by some from the beginning. I believe this was one of the reasons the MOI was reluctant to do this.