A consortium led by Cathay United Bank (
The Smart Card Union (
All four banks in the successful consortium are shareholders of Taipei Smart Card Corp (台北智慧卡票證公司), EasyCard's distributor.
EasyCard, which allows users to board buses, ride the MRT and park in public parking stations in the Taipei area, currently has over 5 million cards in circulation.
In view of the growing popularity of EasyCard, the bidding consortiums hoped the new card would provide more business growth amid keen competition.
The Smart Card Union expects to issue more than 2 million multi-purpose cards, which combine credit, e-wallet and transport pass features, over the next three years, the group said in a statement.
The banks will share royalties jointly but pay for rebates individually depending on the number of cards issued, the statement said.
The partners also have individual promotions in the works for the co-branded card bearing their individual names, it said.
"We hope to start issuing cards by the end of this year," said Joseph Jao (饒世湛), a Cathay United senior executive vice president.
The group is continuing negotiations with Visa International and MasterCard International, Jao said, adding that deals with these groups may not be exclusive.
The union reportedly plans to build an alliance across seven counties in Taiwan's south to boost the number of cards to more than 10 million.
But the successful bid does not necessarily mean lucrative business, given the high issuance costs compared to conventional co-branded credit cards, which attract higher royalties and rebates.
"Anyone who wins the business will lose money," Union Bank marketing manager Chen Mei-ji (陳明智) said, adding that the cost of each card could amount to NT$2,000, compared with NT$1,000 for a conventional co-branded card.
But the group can expand its market share and foster cardholder loyalty in light of frequent use of the EasyCard, he said.
Union Bank had hoped to make itself one of the nation's top three card issuers by winning the bid.
Chinatrust led the nation's credit-card market with 4.34 million cards in circulation as of January, followed by Taishin's 4.69 million, Cathay United's 3.53 million, Union Bank's 2.88 million and E.Sun Bank's (玉山銀行) 2.43 million, according to statistics from the Bureau of Monetary Affairs.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day
Thousands of parents in Singapore are furious after a Cordlife Group Ltd (康盛人生集團), a major operator of cord blood banks in Asia, irreparably damaged their children’s samples through improper handling, with some now pursuing legal action. The ongoing case, one of the worst to hit the largely untested industry, has renewed concerns over companies marketing themselves to anxious parents with mostly unproven assurances. This has implications across the region, given Cordlife’s operations in Hong Kong, Macau, Indonesia, the Philippines and India. The parents paid for years to have their infants’ cord blood stored, with the understanding that the stem cells they contained