"As much as 95 percent of the 9 million people in Taiwan qualified to apply for credit cards have the product already ... and each person has 4.1 cards at hand on average," the industry veteran said, adding that this has reduced the spending per card.
In a bid to boost card spending, the organization will endeavor to expand new card-acceptance points this year, and the vast network of the nation's convenience stores has become their target.
Convenience store chains would start accepting consumers to pay for bills or mail orders by cards in the first half of this year at the soonest, Clark said.
He declined, however, to elaborate on which convenience stores would provide such services.
The company started aggressively promoting everyday usage earlier this year, urging cardholders to use credit cards at their target merchants including gas stations, hospitals and transportation services.
Visa has also been cooperating closely with the Ministry of Finance and the National Credit Card Center (聯合信用卡中心) in government payments, Clark said, adding that Taiwan is a leading country in the Asian Pacific region -- ahead of Hong Kong and Australia -- in opening up the sector for card users.
Government payments consists of vehicle license taxes, house taxes, land taxes, personal income taxes, etc. The market size amounted to around NT$228 billion last year, according to Visa's figures.
For example, card payments for personal income tax penetration -- a NT$80 billion sector -- rose to 20.4 percent last year from 9.7 percent in 2002. Visa hopes to boost the ratio to nearly 30 percent this year.
Another way to raise card spending is to explore new customer segments, the industry veteran said.
Against this backdrop, upscale card users became a target segment to boost card spending.
The average annual spending of the nation's platinum card users amounted to over NT$85,000 last year, whereas the overall average spending totaled about NT$32,000, Visa's figures showed.
"Platinum cards are indeed our most important product in Taiwan," Clark said, adding that the card number reached 3.3 million last year from over 900,000 in 2002, because of the annual fee-free promotion by member banks.
Taiwan became the largest platinum card market in the Asia-Pacific region last year, making up 76 percent of about 4.5 million platinum cards issued in the region, up from 16 percent in 2001.
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